Andrzej Lukowski

It’s been another stellar year for music in 2025, packed full of belters, breakouts and hook-laden earworms.  Lorde returned to her angsty roots, Pulp dropped their first album since, and Bad Bunny reigned supreme on the streamers. We were blessed with new music from pop heavyweights Lady Gaga, Lily Allen and Robyn. In a plot twist, Rosalía dropped a classical album packed with religious references, and Turnstile made hardcore mainstream. Breakout stars CMAT, Addison Rae and Jim Legxacy proved that they are here to stay. Here Time Out editors and contributors have hand-picked the tracks they’ve had on repeat this year. These are the 40 best songs of 2025.  RECOMMENDED: The 25 best albums of 2025. 

This year of music has started with a bang. We’ve seen Chappell Roan go country, Selena Gomez and Benny Blanco smothering audiences with gushy love songs and Playboi Carti’s rapturous return from the underground. We've even been blessed with the return of Lorde! Alongside these pop heavyweights, we’re witnessing rap superstar Doechii continue her chart domination and the breakthrough of Gen Z artists like 2hollis, Tate McRae and Kai Bosch. What songs are defining 2025? Well, we’ve searched through our playlists and extracted the best songs of the year so far, to give you a mid-year vibe check of where we are currently at. But it doesn’t stop there. Keep your eyes peeled for updates to this list throughout the year as we’re still awaiting albums from Turnstile, Miley Cyrus, Pulp, A$AP Rocky and many more. RECOMMENDED: 🎧 The best albums of 2025 (so far)🎥 The best movies of 2025 (so far)📺 The best TV of 2025 (so far)

Urgently in need of some cool pressie inspo for your nearest and dearest? Don’t worry about it! Our London gift guide is here, and it features loads of lovely pressies to suit just about any Londoner you can imagine.  From nifty gadgets to stylish accessories, covetable homeware to kids’ gifts, our editors have got every base covered, including plenty of sustainable options and handmade bits from some of London’s coolest indie brands and makers.  Need even more present inspiration? Check out our roundup of London’s best Christmas hampers for 2025. Time Out’s 2025 Christmas Gift Guide at a glance 🏰 Best for tech nerds: Nothing headphones 💷 Best for foodies: Allday Goods knife 🔬 Best for style queens: Peachy Den scarf and mitten set 🎡 Best for cool blokes: Percival martini cap 🎨 Best for youngsters: Ty Beanie Bouncers RECOMMENDED: More Christmas fun in London. 

Hello! I'm Andrzej, the theatre editor of Time Out London, and me and my freelancers review a heck of a lot of theatre. This page is an attempt to distil the shows that are on right now into something like a best of the best based upon our actual reviews, as opposed to my predictions, which determine our longer range what to book for list. London's critics’ choice shows to book for at a glance: Best musical: Hamilton, Victoria Palace Theatre Best star casting: All My Sons, Wyndham’s Theatre Best for kids: Paddington the Musical, Savoy Theatre Best old classic: Les Miserables, Sondheim Theatre  Best for something a bit different: Titanique, Criterion Theatre It isn’t a scientific process, and you’ll definitely see shows that got four stars above ones that got five – this is generally because the five star show is probably going to be on for years to come (hello, Hamilton) and I'm trying to draw your attention to one that’s only running for a couple more weeks. Or sometimes, we just like to shake things up a bit. It’s also deliberately light on the longer-running West End hits simply because I don’t think you need to know what I think about Les Mis before you book it (it’s fine!). So please enjoy the best shows in London, as recommended by us, having actually seen them.

To say that William Shakespeare bestrides our culture like a colossus is to undersell him. Over 400 years since his death, the playwright is uncontested as the greatest writer of English who has ever lived. Even if you’re not a fan of sixteenth century blank verse – and if not, why not? – his influence over our culture goes far beyond that of any other writer. He invented words, phrases, plots, characters, stories that are still vividly alive today; his history plays utterly shaped our understanding of our own past as a nation. London Shakespeare plays at a glance: Best for Christmas: Twelfth Night, Barbican Best celebrity cast: Romeo & Juliet, Harold Pinter Theatre Best weird: The Tempest, Shakespeare’s Globe And unsurpisingly he is inescapable in London. The iconic Elizabethan recreation Shakespeare’s Globe theatre is his temple, with a year-round programme that’s about three-quarters his works. Although based in Stratford-upon-Avon, the Royal Shakespeare Company regularly visit the capital, most frequently the Barbican Centre. And Shakespeare plays can be found… almost anywhere else, from the National Theatre – where they invariably run in the huge Olivier venue – to tiny fringe productions and outdoor version that pop up everywhere come the warmer months.  This page is simple: we tell you what Shakespeare plays are on in town this month (the answer is pretty much always ‘at least one’). We we tell you which of his works you can see coming up in the future. No other pla

There’s perhaps nothing more magical than seeing a play or musical in the open air, and London is absolutely the city for it. In defiance of the weather gods, our outdoor theatre season now stretches from March to late October: we’re are just that tough. Or at least, optimistic about the weather. Substantially it revolves around a few key theatres, notably Shakespeare’s Globe – open March to October and generally boasting a cheeky outdoor Christmas production – and the delightful Regent’s Park Open Air Theatre, which is open late spring to the very end of summer. The former specialises in Shakespeare plays, while the latter has a musical theatre focus. Althoiugh the summer is now basically over, the open air season continues for quite a while, especially at the Globe, where the main outdor theatre remains open until the end of October, and reopens in December for this year’s Christmas show Pinocchio. Not sure what you'll need for an open-air theatre trip? Then don’t miss our guide to practical open-air theatre info.  If you’re interested in taking in some outdoor cinema this summer, head to our dedicated page.

Greetings of the season. Well, I'm actually writing this in early September. But then, how long is Christmas theatre season in London exactly? Certainly it’s in full swing by late November, with virtually every pantomime and kids’ show in the city up and running way before Advent, with most of them running until the new year. London's best family Christmas shows at a glance: Best cartoon spin off: Bluey’s Big Play, Royal Festival Hall Best immersive show for kids: Fireside Tales, Punchdrunk Enrichment Stores Best musical for all the family: Top Hat, Queen Elizabeth Hall Best returning Christmas classic: A Chistmas Carol, Old Vic Best for babies: Scrunch, Unicorn Theatre and Univers, Barbican I’m Time Out’s theatre editor, and I have seen more pantos and Julia Donaldson adaptations than any human being should. But also it’s always an exciting time of year: Christmas is the best time to take children to the theatre because there are such a dizzying array of options, for all ages. This list is an attempt to try and put some order on the gargantuan breadth of children’s and family friendly theatre across the city during the season. It doesn’t include long running West End shows – you know about The Lion King, right – but is an attempt to compile as many festive shows for young audiences as possible, at theatres big and small. We’ve divided our list into family-friendly Christmas shows – that is to say, shows suitable for children, but that you could easily visit without – and

Hello, and welcome to the Time Out theatre reviews round up. From huge star vehicles and massive West End musical to hip fringe shows and more, this is a compliation of all the latest London reviews from the Time Out theatre team, which is me plus our team of freelance critics. December is the busiest time of year for London theatre – expect plenty of pantomime reviews and other seasonal fun but also a slew of major openings from across London’s many venues as the industry works itself to a frenzy before shutting down for Christmas. The best new London theatre shows to book for in 2025. A-Z of West End shows.

Oh yes it is! London panto season is back for 2025, and here’s Time Out’s complete rundown of every major pantomime in the city. London's best pantomimes at a glance: Best ‘classic’ panto: Cinderella, Hackney Empire Hippest panto: Jack and the Beanstalk, Lyric Hammersmith Best celebrity panto: Sleeping Beauty, London Palladium Christmas panto you can see on Christmas Day: Cinderella and the Matzo Ball, JW3  Best adults only panto: see our adult panto list For some Londoners the only time of year they'll visit a theatre, panto season is a bizarre, joyful, quintessentially British time to come together and watch some light-hearted spoof fairytales that revolve around men dressing up as women and/or farm animals. Within that, though, there’s huge variation, from the megascale London Palladium show with its filthy figurehead Julian Clary, to Clive Rowe’s brilliant panto purism at the Hackney Empire and JW3’s amusing Jewish spin that runs on Christmas Day itself. I’m Andrzej Łukowski, Time Out’s theatre editor, and while this page is simply intended as a round-up of London pantomimes, then it’s an *informed* round up – I have seen approximately four billion pantos over the last 15 years or so, and know what they’re all like, plus we’ll update this page with star ratings when our reviews of this year’s crop start rolling in in late November. London is a city that takes pantomime seriously, and even if the idea of seasonal frivolity fills you with dread, there’s a panto out there

December means Christmas and Christmas means a host of bizarre and delightful one off, high concept comedy shows, ranging from comedians singing carols for a good cause, to Adam Riches pretending to be Sean Bean for inscrutable reasons of his own. We’ve gathered some of our favouite whimsical season one-offs as this month’s picks. There are far, far too many one-off, multi-performer comedy nights in London for us to compile a single coherent page with our favouites on, which is entirely to London’s credit. So do check individual bills of comedy clubs online for that sort of thing. But if you’re looking for an individual comedian with a full headline show then this page is here to compile the Time Out editorial team’s top choices, often with our reviews from the Edinburgh Festival Fringe. The best comedy clubs in London.The best new theatre shows to book for in London.

London’s theatre scene is the most exciting in the world: perfectly balanced between the glossy musical theatre of Broadway and the experimentalism of Europe, it’s flavoured by the British preference for new writing and love of William Shakespeare, but there really is something for everyone. Between the showtunes of the West End and the constant pipeline of new writing from the subsidised sector, there’s a whole thrilling world, with well over 100 theatres and over venues playing host to everything from classic revivals to cutting-edge immersive work. London's best shows to book for at a glance: Best musical: Beetlejuice, Prince Edward Theatre Best Shakespeare play: Romeo & Juliet, Harold Pinter Theatre Best celebrity show: Krapp’s Last Tape, Royal Court Theare Best for teens: John Proctor is the Villain, Royal Court Theatre Best play by the late Tom Stoppard: Arcadia, Old Vic This rolling list is constantly updated to share the best of what’s coming up and currently booking: these choices aren’t the be-all and end-all of great theatre in 2025, but they are, as a rule, the biggest and splashiest shows coming up, alongside intriguing looking smaller projects.   They’re shows worth booking for, pronto, both to avoid sellouts but to get the cheaper tickets that initially go on sale for most shows but tend to be snapped up months before they actually open. Please note that the prices quoted are the ‘official’ prices when the shows go on sale – with West End shows in particular

Even after a couple of vintage years for new music, 2025 has been special. Sure, we didn’t get a clear-cut ‘song of the summer’, but artists have been instead putting out defining works in a longer format. The past 12 (well, 11) months have featured all manner of extraordinary album releases.  Belted-to-the-rafters country pop, plunderphonic majesty, ecstatic dance music, intimate electronic world-building, history-collapsing art rock, triumphant hip-hop… these are just a few of the sounds and styles that have been executed marvellously in 2025. Here are the year’s finest 25 albums, chosen by Time Out editors and contributors.

The Hackney panto’s USP is Clive Rowe: less a dame than a roiling force of nature, post pandemic he has not only starred in every panto at the Empire but directed them too, in what has increasingly felt like a one man (in a frock) show.  But what happens to the one-man show when the man (and his frock) aren’t there?  Rowe is such a panto purist that he refuses to perform in productions of Cinderella, reasoning that there is no dame role in it. So this year, he’s directing only. And it’s probably not a bad idea: the underlying fundamentals of this year’s panto are stronger than in recent years, where the secondary characters feel like they’ve been left to wither on the vine while Rowe swans off with the glory. This show’s heart lies with its villains: Alexandra Waite-Roberts is the very definition of ‘pantomime villain’ as Oblivia, Cinderella’s cacklingly evil stepmother who in this version offed her stepdaughter’s dad years previously and barely makes any effort to conceal the fact. ‘Ugly sisters’ is a term that has fallen out of fashion in recent years, but in the roles that used to be called that, George Heyworth and Kat B are great fun as Nausea and Flatula, two women who aren’t so much evil as incredibly dumb. In the absence of Rowe, the audience work falls to them – they make a solid enough job of it – and they memorably join forces with Nicholas McLean’s prissy Buttons for a run through ‘The Twelve Days of Christmas’ that lasts something like 10 minutes and heavily revo

French Mediterranean restaurant Maset is a relaxed neighbourhood bistro, albeit it’s a very fancy neighbourhood (it’s on Marylebone’s eye-wateringly chic Chiltern Street). The decor is clean and creamy white, but also intentionally cluttered and a little mismatched – when we visited I was perched on a canvas chair while my friend was crammed onto a cushion-filled banquette. It’s nice, rather than forced – French dining can be a little formal, but Maset is happy to put you at your ease, and matches its informal looks with a convivial and relaxed atmosphere. Some of the food is very dainty, but Maset is not afraid to be hearty It’s the brainchild of restaurateur Melody Adams, whose previous venues are the nearby Basque-inspired restaurants Lurra and Donostia. Maset hops over the border for its inspiration, with the seafood-centric menu based on the cuisine of the Occitan region of France (aka the bit with Marseilles in it). It is definitely a choose-your-own culinary adventure type of place. For those on a budget I’d say Maset is casual enough that you can stick to its bountiful lighter options without feeling you’re table blocking. A sensationally impressively realised trio of bouillabaisse croquettes (tastes like, um, bouillabaisse, but crunchy) and crisp glass of Maison Ventenac Cassandre will set you back £17 – you won’t exactly be stuffed but you’ll have got your money’s worth. Also very light, very tasty and very affordable: beignets de brandade (saltcod fritters) with a

Proof that the Lyric Hammersmith is basically London’s flagship panto these days comes from the opposite end of London, as Stratford East chalks up its best seasonal show in years, essentially by importing the previous Lyric creative team. Redoubtable composer Robert Hyman is still present and correct, offering a fizzy electropop backdrop to the original songs (the Stratford East panto doesn’t ‘do covers’, although a few snatches of Chappell Roan and Cyndi Lauper in fact make their way in). But co-writer/directors Vikki Stone and Tonderai Munyevu have turned in a funny, sassy, great-looking production that has a ball with the already very much in-evidence anti-capitalist vibes of traditional panto Mother Goose. In Mama Goose, the very enjoyable Duane Gooden plays the eponymous dame, an amiable goose-loving old dear who lives a happy life with her gaggle of three geese plus human son Jack (Marcellus Whyte). Unfortunately a swingeing tax is introduced on honking, that sets Mama back £10 every time one of her geese makes a sound. Unable to pay up, her geese are confiscated and she’s left up to her eyeballs in debt.  Cue the arrival of well-intentioned ‘goose fairy’ WTF (The Wholesome Thoughtful Fairy, Ellie Seaton), who seeks to help Mama G out by gifting her Gary the Golden Goose, a bird that lays golden eggs… but only on the condition she doesn’t tell anyone. This turns out to be a terrible plan: it’s basically impossible to conceal a human-sized goose from your own son who yo

A century ago, Noël Coward was the shit. Aged just 25, he was in a phase of his career when he couldn’t stop scoring hits. And he wasn’t simply some young fogey with a nice line in upmarket witticisms: his 1924 breakthrough play The Vortex had scandalised polite society with its depiction of drug abuse (which was furthermore an allegory for the even more verboten subject of homosexuality). And in 1925 came Fallen Angels, which discussed sex outside marriage and the (admittedly hypothetical) prospect of an affair with an insouciant casualness that scandalised a stiff upper lipped interwar England.  But in 2025, it feels silly to pretend Fallen Angels is anything more than a nicely crafted old-fashioned pleasure. Or certainly in this straight-down-the-line period revival. Yes, it’s amusing, but it’s amusing in a ‘half the jokes are about how the maid is unexpectedly clever’, type of way. Julia (Janie Dee) and Jane (Alexandra Gilbreath) are middle aged best friends. Julia is posh and poised. Jane is posh and shambolic. They are spending the weekend together while their distant husbands go off golfing.  But things get spicy, quickly: they receive word that Maurice, a Frenchman they both had sexual relationships with before marriage, is in town and intending to visit them. They freak out and start drinking heavily, convinced that Maurice will be wanting to play hide the saucisson with them both. And they’re sorely tempted to sample his charcuterie: it’s made clear that there’s not

Show writer Kate Trefry explains all you need to know about ‘The First Shadow’. ‘Stranger Things: The First Shadow’ is a sprawling maximalist monolith, a gargantuan entertainment that goes beyond being a mere ‘play’. It’s too unwieldy and too indulgent to be a theatrical classic. But nonetheless, this prequel to the Netflix retro horror smash is the very antithesis of a cynical screen-to-stage adaptation.  As overwhelming in scale as as the show’s monstrous Mindflayer, it’s a seethingly ambitious three-hour extravaganza of groundbreaking special effects, gratuitous easter eggs and a wild, irreverent theatricality that feels totally in love with the source material while being appreciably distinct from it.  It’s clearly made by a fan, that being big-name director Stephen Daldry, who used his Netflix connections (he’s the man responsible for ‘The Crown’) to leverage an official collab with the Duffer Brothers, creators of the retro horror smash.  It starts as it means to go on, with pretty much the most technically audacious opening ten minutes of a show I’ve ever seen, as we watch a US naval vessel deploy an experimental cloaking device in 1943, to catastrophic effect. Yes, the sets wobble a bit, and yes, writer Kate Trefry’s dialogue is basically just some sailors bellowing cliches. But we’re talking about watching a giant vessel getting pulled into a horrifying parallel dimension on stage. It is awesome; and when it cut into a thunderous playback of Kyle Dixon and Michael St

I wonder if the reason John le Carré never allowed his novels to be adapted for the stage was the fear they'd get turned into the sort of trashy touring potboilers that crisscross the country in numbers but never make it to the scrutiny of the West End. It was presumably his death in 2020 that allowed a stage version of his breakthrough The Spy Who Came in from the Cold to finally go ahead. But I’d say his estate was right to give the nod: the story is in safe hands with playwright David Eldridge and director Jeremy Herrin, whose adaptation settles in at the West End after scoring good notices in Chichester. This is a slick and yes, maybe slightly MOR adaptation of Le Carre’s taut, brutal espionage yarn. But it’s a very good one, and Eldridge deftly crafts an intensely interior world, with us seeing the action unfold as much from within jaded spy protagonist Alec Leamas’s head as without. Herrin’s production goes heavy on the noir, and with good reason. Rory Keenan is magnificently grumpy and rumpled as Leamas, a hardbitten British spy in Cold War Berlin who ‘comes in from the cold’ – that is to say, is brought home – after his last informer is executed by Hans-Dieter Mundt, a ruthless counterintelligence agent who has systematically dismantled the British spy apparatus in East Germany. (It is slightly disconcerting that Keenan speaks in his natural Dublin accent, although you soon get used to it). But there is a long game at work: returning to The Circus (a fictionalised ver

‘Merry and tragical. Tedious and brief’ is how the play with a play staged at the end of A Midsummer Night’s Dream is described. While nobody could accuse this co-production between the Globe and Headlong as being tedious, it otherwise feels like it could have otherwise been patterned off that contradictory description. Brief is easy: the show – co-directed by Holly Race Roughan and Naeem Hayat – is a miraculously short two hours and ten minutes, something largely achieved by embracing the indoor Sam Wanamaker Playhouse’s lack of set change opportunities and sort of collapsing all the scenes together. Max Johns’s set is a pure white affair – a nod to it being winter (there’s a little snowman at the top), but also sterile and inorganic, more suggestive of the palace sequences that bookend the play than the magical Athenian woods in which most of the action occurs. Do the characters actually leave the palace? Is it even a palace? There is the suggestion that this is all happening in an asylum: it’s not an especially clear suggestion, but it certainly somewhat accounts for both the set and how genuinely deranged Michael Marcus’s Theseus and Hedydd Dylan’s Hippolyta appear to be, with fairy king and queen Oberon and Titania (who Marcus and Dyland also play) seemingly their mellower alternate personalities.  It’s certainly merry: perhaps the most successful innovation here is turning the light relief rude mechanicals into the serving staff at Theseus and Hippolyta’s feast at the s

It’s hard to know if the creative team behind this wildly misguided immersive theatre adaptation of Douglas Adams’s satirical sci-fi classic loves the source material too much or not at all.  On the one hand, its incorporation of elements of the less well-known book So Long and Thanks for all the Fish suggest a deeper familiarity with the novel series and a desire to not simply do a straight retelling of the OG Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, which has been famously already done via radio, novel, video game, TV series, film and various cult theatre shows (albeit none of this very recently). On the other hand, it seems to have been made by people who don’t get Adams’ humour, characters or why people like the first book, and uses the romance plot from So Long… to create a far more saccharine story than Adams himself did. The writer and co-creator is one Arvind Ethan David, a former Adams protege. So I assume he’s a fan. But this play hardly makes a case for his mentor’s brilliance. It begins (mostly) harmlessly enough. The first scene is set in the pub which – in the Adams telling – hapless Englishman Arthur Dent is dragged to by his eccentric friend Ford Prefect, on a very specific mission to drink six pints of bitter ahead of ‘hitchhiking’ aboard a spaceship belonging to the Vogons, the incredibly tedious alien race about to blow Earth up to build a galactic bypass. This all gets a bit immersive theatre’d up. There are novelty cocktails. There is audience interaction. We ar

High priests of the theatrically random Told By An Idiot are a perfect match for Mac Barnett and Jon Klassen’s droll festive picturebook How Does Santa Go Down the Chimney? Adapted and directed by company leader Paul Hunter, it’s a glorious 50-minute non sequitur that should appeal to anyone with a sense of nonsense. The title question is posed many times throughout the show, which fails to ever offer a conclusive answer but does get delightfully bogged down in a series of absurd vignettes.  A cast of five chop and change the roles of Santa, his reindeer and miscellaneous others, multitasking their way furiously through sequences that interrogate such important questions as whether Santa does his laundry as he travels (in order to get the chimney soot off) and what do dogs think of Santa. A question asked repeatedly is how does Santa get into flats, a query that it absolutely refuses to answer properly but does drop in a game show sequence in which the audience is invited to offer its own suggestions and the cast try and act them out. It’s performed on a lovely Sonya Smullen set that somewhat apes the po-faced surrealism of Klassen’s art, but also has two big furry slides on it. They’re suggestive of the curve of a rooftop but mostly they just look incredibly fun.  A younger primary-school audience absolutely lapped it up, though I wonder if the extreme whimsy and lack of any real plot might baffle older kids. But if you’ve got any sense of the absurd, you’ll have a good time

Cementing the Lyric Hammersmith’s place at the top of the London panto pantheon, here’s a wonderfully inventive new take on Jack and the Beanstalk for 2025.  I’ve seen some high-concept pantomimes take a swing and a miss, but returning writer Sonia Jalay and director Nicolai La Barrie are impressively assured as they relocate the bean-centric action to a strict Hammersmith school concealing a sinister secret. Siblings Jack (Joey James) and Jill (Sienna Widd) are newly enrolled at the ultra strict Fleshcreep Academy, and while John Patridge’s meat-obsessed (he even wears a meat-pattered suit) Fleshcreep bears zero resemblance to the rather scarier Katherine Birbalsingh, it’s not hard to see see the whole enjoyably unruly spectacle as a satire on the fetishisation of ‘strict’ modern schooling.  The imperious grandeur of regular Lyric dame Emmanuel Akwafo is somewhat missed, although replacement Sam Harrison is great fun when he’s allowed off the leash – his best moment is cracking himself up by ad libbing about the Lily Allan album to an audience of bemused primary schoolers. But there’s something fundamentally amusing about the plot point of his Momma Trott being worked in as the flamboyant new Fleshcreep Academy dinner lady, much to the mortification of her kids.  James is nice as socially anxious Jack who communicates with most people via a lairy sock puppet. And in her first named stage role, recent graduate Widd is scene-stealing good as the fearlessly bolshy Jill, a sort

Alfie (Clive Owen) is dying of cancer. Julie (Saskia Reeves) is not. A couple since their twenties, their lives are about to diverge dramatically, though precisely how dramatically is up for grabs. David Eldridge’s new play begins with a physically ailing Alfie telling Julie he wants to stop treatment, before proceeding to splurge all manner of wild thoughts, theories and plans about his imminent death.  End follows Eldridge’s Beginning and Middle at the National Theatre. I’m not sure I’d call them his mid-life-crisis trilogy. But certainly in sum they are about as rigorous an interrogation of middle age as exists in the British theatrical canon. The fizzy, sexy smash Beginning was about the rush of first attraction between a 38-year-old and a divorced 42-year-old. Middle was about a slightly older couple stuck in the rut of a predictable long-term marriage.  With their handsome-looking north London house, Alfie and Julie are initially coded as the sort of monied older couple that has popped up in English theatre for centuries. The fact they’re actually just 59 comes as a slight surprise (Owen and Reeves are actually a few years older), but it’s their cultural references that feel the most startling. It soon transpires that Alfie was a big time acid house DJ, a subject he basically never stops talking about; there’s something disconcerting about thinking of that generation as ‘old’ now. End is not about Gen X dying out en masse: it’s kind of a point of the play that Julie pr

Long gone are the days when a British grotto meant a quick sit on the knee of a boozy-smelling man with an obviously fake beard in the backroom of a mid-tier department store. In the age of immersive theatre, London’s grottos have spun off into all sorts of esoteric forms that now typically involve a lengthy ‘adventure’ prior to finally meeting Old Saint Nick, whose knee you are very definitely not allowed to sit on because of woke. The oddly named Wundrful World of Christmas is billed as an immersive experience rather than a grotto, and indeed in its native Australia that may be fair enough – do they even have grottos in the land of beach Christmas? But here it is basically a posh grotto, and probably London’s biggest this year, with an expensive marketing campaign and fancy location in Borough Yards. It begins with us ‘boarding’ what my notes say is a flying lift, which – as conveyed via computer generated vista we see out of its ‘windows’ – is piloted by a slightly fractious group of elves all the way to the North Pole. There we encounter… more elves, who are hanging out in a cluster of rooms so Christmassy they almost provoked a seizure when I visited in mid-November. Each has a little skit or bit of patter, and all the children involved - including my own - were delighted and entirely sold on the fact that yes, this was now the season to be jolly. Aimed at ages three to eight, there are light interactions and even a small problem-solving task – it’s hardly taxing but the

Non-parents may only be hazily aware of Dav Pilkey’s long-running series of graphic novels devoted to the adventures of Dog Man, a police officer with the head – and brain – of a dog. If this sounds stupid, it’s meant to be (in a further meta move, the books are supposed to be written by George and Harold, the goofy tween protagonists of Pilkey’s older Captain Underpants books). Anyway, you either know this already or it’s completely irrelevant to you, but long story short, there was an off-Broadway musical made in 2019 that got good reviews, and now it’s headed to London. Jen Wineman’s original production is transferring to the Southbank Centre’s Queen Elizabeth Hall next summer following a North American tour. As with the recent film, the musical is loosely adapted from the book A Tale of Two Kitties, which follows Dog Man’s tussling with his nemesis Petey the Cat and his affable clone son Li’l Petey. Again, you either know what I’m going on about here or you don’t, but New York reviews were warm, and it sounds like a summer holiday must for young fans of the series. Dog Man: The Musical is at Queen Elizabeth Hall, Jul 30-Aug 16 2026. Tickets go on sale Dec 5. The best new London theatre shows to book for in 2025 and 2026. The best kids theatre in London. Get the latest and greatest from the Big Smoke – from news and reviews to events and trends. Just follow our Time Out London WhatsApp channel. Stay in the loop: sign up for our free Time Out London newsletter for the best

★★★★ It’s difficult to pinpoint why the moment Paddington walks on stage at the start of his new musical is quite so moving.  Spoiler alert: ‘Paddington’ is a small woman (Arti Shah) in a bear costume (by Tahra Zafar), with a regular-sized man (James Hameed) doing the voice and remote controlling the facial expressions from backstage. Which doesn’t sound groundbreaking but it’s enough to make us believe that Paddington is really in the room with us. Which is surely the point of the endeavor. He’s not the Paddington of the films: he looks different, more teddy-like, and Hameed’s voice is much younger and more boyish than Ben Whishaw’s. He looks more like the Paddington of Michael Bond’s books, but he’s not really him either, on account of all the singing he does and how much more wordy that makes him. He is a new Paddington. But he is, fundamentally, Paddington, right there in the room with us. Does that make it a good performance? I mean sure, he’s a triple threat: adorable, polite and also a bear. The normal rules for a musical theatre lead are suspended here. But Hameed can sing well, and there’s enough expression in both face and body for Paddington to feel genuinely alive to us. Shah doesn’t really dance, but a couple of elaborately choreographed sequences in which our hero pings around causing chaos are impressively physical. Main attraction aside, a fine creative team led by director Luke Sheppard has created a very enjoyable show indeed. It’s by and large a stage adapt

Where other arts slow down in December, London theatre accelerates frenziedly, and it’s a curiosity of the season that while there are gazillions of pantos and explicitly Christmas-themed family productions, it’s also the busiest time of year for ‘regular’ shows. If you’re after a panto or something to take the kids to, then do check out our respective lists. But there’s an abundance of serious dramas, world class comedies and cool indie plays debuting this month – here’s our guide to the best non-tinselly openings in town this month. The best new London theatre shows opening in December 2025 Photo: Manuel Harlan 1. Oh, Mary! There are lots of significant plays opening in December but no massive blockbusters – the year’s biggest show Paddington snuck in on the very last day of November. Still, Oh, Mary! is a pretty darn heavy hitter, and much anticipated to boot, being a transfer of Cole Escola’s outrageous Broadway comedy about Abraham Lincoln’s embittered, fame-hungry wife Mary. Giles Terera stars as Abe, with US performer Mason Alexander Park – great in supporting roles in recent Jamie Lloyd productions – stepping up to the lead role of Mary. Trafalgar Theatre, Dec 3-Apr 25 2026. Buy tickets here. Image: Bridge Theatre 2. Into the Woods Since Stephen Sondheim’s death we’ve had a revue show celebrating his career and even the premiere of his final musical. What we’ve not had is any major revivals of his classics, but that finally changes with this lavish Bridge revival

More than any other major London theatre, Hampstead has been at the sharp end of recent funding struggles: its last artistic director Roxana Silbert quit in 2022 as a result of the venue losing all of its Arts Council funding.  Still, the remaining team have limped on valiantly, in part helped by the patronage of the the late, great Tom Stoppard: annual revivals of his more obscure plays the last three Christmases have guaranteed bums on seats, and the rest of the programme has been no slouch. Following on from the first ever UK revival of Stoppard’s Indian Ink - which is about to start its run – Hampstead’s 2026 season will kick off with the world premiere of Alexi Kaye Campbell’s Bird Grove (Feb 13-Mar 21 2026), which is a sort of origin story for the great Victorian author George Eliot, following the then Mary Ann Evans as the teenager comes into conflict with her father, who is determined to marry her off. Next up and in quite the coup, the US actor Stanley Tucci directs the world premiere of his countryman Richard Nelson’s Springwood (Jun 15-Jul 25 2026), a world premiere based on his screenplay for the film Hyde Park on Hudson, which starred Bill Murray as Franklin D Roosevelt. The stage play would seem to be basically the same idea, following a culture clash meeting between the US president and King George VI as the monarch became the first in history to make a royal visit to the USA on the cusp of the Second World War. Finally there’s the UK premiere of David Lindsay-

The death of Tom Stoppard at the weekend marked the passing of one of the greatest British playwrights of all time, and a giant of popular culture to boot, whose dizzyingly high-concept plays made his name but whose side-hustle as a screenwriter and script doctor left a huge mark on Hollywood, elevating films from Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade to Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith to his own frothy but witty Shakespeare in Love. Although 88 was undoubtedly a ripe old age to reach, there’s still a sense he was taken from us too soon: his superb final play Leopoldstadt only premiered comparatively recently, in 2020, and Stoppard acknowledged that despite it being billed at the time as his last work, he was still tinkering with new stuff. He remained a public presence and supportive of the frequent revivals of his work. It’s no surprise that he will be a recipient of the West End’s ultimate honour: the lights of all its theatres will be dimmed in memory of Stoppard at 7pm this Tuesday (Dec 2). If you’re interested in paying your respects, there’s no perfect spot to do this, though meaningful places would include Wyndham’s Theatre (where Leopoldstadt ran), the National Theatre (which he was intimately associated with throughout his career) or the Old Vic (which staged his breakthrough Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead, and many plays since). Whatever theatre you’re near, Tuesday would be the night to pay your respects. There are also several opportunities coming up to see hi

★★★★★ Ivo van Hove is a nothing-if-not-mercurial director: his last London outing was the much derided (though I liked it) avant-garde ‘musical’ Opening Night, which was about as big a flop as you really get in the West End these days, closing weeks early. But expectations were always high for this revival of Arthur Miller’s 1947 breakthrough All My Sons, because Van Hove made his own UK breakthrough with his extraordinary 2014 production of Miller’s A View from the Bridge. And by Hove, he’s done it again. To some extent the secret of his triumph here is ‘cast really really good actors’, foremost Bryan Cranston and Paapa Essiudu, who offer two of the best stage performances of 2025.  But what van Hove has done is discretely uncouple Miller’s play from the naturalism that often stifles it. Running at the same length as the starry Old Vic production of a few years back but with no interval (ie about 15 minutes longer), Van Hove’s production really savours the writing.  All My Sons is an eventually bitter indictment of the American dream, that traces the downfall of Joe Keller (Cranston), a businessman and factor owner in suburban Ohio, 1947, who has recently avoided jail for his business’s role in selling cracked cylinder heads to the US Air Force, leading to the deaths of 21 pilots (yes, it’s what the band is named after). His partner Steve Deever was instead blamed and jailed. Photo: Jan Versweyveld When I’ve seen the play before, the production has tended to gallop towards

The (still) bright and shiny Young V&A’s first two exhibitions were devoted to foreign cultures and history – very foreign and very historical in the case of the recently concluded Ancient Egypt exhibition Making Egypt, while before that its first exhibition Japan: Myths to Manga took a look at centuries of Japanese iconography and its impact on contemporary pop culture. For its third exhibition, it’s time for something a little different. As the title suggests, Inside Aardman: Wallace & Gromit and Friends is an exploration of a rather more recent, rather more homegrown cultural phenomenon. Tying in with the 50th anniversary of the world’s most famous stop motion animation studio, it will take young audiences behind the scenes at Aardman and its iconic roster of claymation characters, from the eponymous man and dog to Shaun the Sheep, Chicken Run, and even ’70s legend Morph. Photo: David Parry There will be over 150 items on display, ranging from puppets and early character sketches for Aardman characters, to early examples of stop motion animation from the V&A archives.  But perhaps the real highlight will be interactive bits that take children behind the scenes of how an Aardman film is made – interactive activities will include storyboarding, designing characters, experimenting with lighting a set ands creating live action videos. Although the exhibition is suitable for all ages, the optimum audience is ages eight to 14. As ever with Young V&A temporary exhibitions, your

When the Royal Court recently announced that it would stage the UK debut of the hugely hyped Broadway smash John Proctor is the Villain, I’d wondered if the show’s UK lead Sadie Sink might come over with it. The answer, it would seem, is a resounding ‘no’ as the Stranger Things star has, delightfully, announced she’ll be doing a totally different play in London at the same time, starring in a new production of Shakespeare’s Romeo & Juliet directed by Brit auteur Rob Icke. The youthful Sink will, naturally, play Juliet, one half of Western literature’s most famous doomed couple with Romeo, who’ll be played here by the even younger Noah Jupe, who is probably best known for playing Marcus, the middle child in A Quiet Place and its sequel. He makes his stage debut opposite Sink, who is more of a theatre veteran: the flame-haired actor made her own debut over a decade ago in the title role of a Broadway production of Annie. What can we expect? Although Icke is an enthusiastic rewriter of the classics, he rarely touches Shakespeare’s language, but does often impose quite radical new interpretations of the action onto the likes of Hamlet and Player Kings (his mash-up of Henry IV parts 1 and 2). His productions are always modern dress, and generally artsy but in an accessible way, and tend to be stacked with a recurrent core crew of British stage actors (though expect more fresh faces for the play’s sundry teenage characters). Though always popular, Romeo & Juliet is definitely going

Theatreland loves a sale – there’s no way we were going to get to Black Friday without being given opportunity to save some serious cash on West End tickets. Theatre’s big Black Friday sale runs from today until early December and features savings of up to 60 percent on a wide variety of shows. Run by London Theatre Direct – in partnership with Time Out – obvious jewels in the crown are the big West End shows and musicals that have been running for years and usually charge a pretty penny – these periodic sales are your occasional chance to get into them at a more manageable price. Big participants this time include The Devil Wears Prada, Back to the Future, Starlight Express, Six the Musical and more. It’s also great for picking up a Christmas theatre bargain: festive shows are often only on for a few weeks and are happy to get all the advance sales they can get – offers include Elf the Musical, Bluey’s Big Play and Pinocchio at the Globe. Then, finally, it’s great to pick up a ticket for one of the big shows of next year, which haven’t had time to build up buzz yet: great 2026 shows to score bargains on include Teeth ’N’ Smiles starring Self Esteem, Cirque du Soleil’s OVO and megahyped Broadway comedy Oh, Mary! The Black Friday 2025 theatre sale runs from now until Dec 8. Buy tickets here. The best new London theatre shows to book for in 2025 and 2026. Review: The Hunger Games: On Stage.

★★★ The big question with adapting The Hunger Games for the stage is that is it not totally nuts to adapt The Hunger Games for the stage? A substantial proportion of Suzanne Collins’s smash 2008 YA novel is set during the titular Games, which are a sort of gladiatorial reality TV contest in which heavily armed teens murder each other until there’s only one left,  Historically this sort of thing is not theatre’s strength. A cheeky duel, absolutely. But a half-hour plus nonstop combat sequence featuring 24 fighters and multiple sub-locations is… tricky. And to their credit, director Matthew Dunster and a top-notch creative team do a pretty damn good job of finding a way forward, deploying aerial work, pyro, video screens, some tightly drilled choreography, the odd song and a highly mobile, rapidly changing set from Miriam Buether to create a sequence that’s coherent and gripping, even if it’s hard to really hand on heart say this is as effective a representation as in the beloved Jennifer Lawrence film (as much as anything, without close ups it’s tricky to follow who all the minor characters are). Photo: Johan Persson But it’s solid, and I found it hard not to admire the quixotic but skilled attempt to translate something so action-packed to the stage. a hybrid of The Running Man and The Devil Wears Prada Dunster is not a subtle director, and in many ways that suits Collins’s novel. He picks out the themes of class oppression between the gaudy dandies of the Capitol and dirt

Reece Shearsmith and Steve Pemberton’s excellent play Stage/Fright ran at Wyndham’s Theatre earlier this year, and felt like a loving coda to Inside No. 9, the duo’s long-running comedy horror anthology series, which recently wrapped up after nine seasons.  Stage/Fright has been a long goodbye, heading out on UK tour after its West End run, but now its creators have declared they’re done with it for good – and potentially Inside No 9 as a concept – after one final run of shows. And they’re coming around soon: presumably in order to accommodate busy schedules, Stage/Fright will run for six shows only in early January at the Eventim Apollo in Hammersmith. It’s a big venue, but considering it previously sold out a three-month West End run entirely in advance, it seems likely these tickets are going to fly. Inevitably a lot of those tickets will probably go to hardcore Inside No. 9 fans who have already see it, but if that’s not you, you should still give it a go: the play is an inventive black comedy that’s as much a celebration of theatre as it is the show itself – you don’t actually need to have seen the TV series to have a good time. Inside No. 9’s Stage/Fright is at the Eventim Apollo, Jan 2-6 2026. Tickets go on sale Nov 13 at noon from here. The best new London theatre openings to book for in 2025 and 2026. Plus: Jesus Christ Superstar returns to London with Sam Ryder in the lead role. Get the latest and greatest from the Big Smoke – from news and reviews to events and tr

So-called ‘immersive’ exhibitions have become big business in London in recent time, with shows dedicated to Tutankhamun, the Titanic and Pompeii all playing in 2025, the vaunted ‘immersion’ achieved via a mix of factors ranging from interactive sets to films to VR sections. Now here comes a brand new immersive exhibition for north London, and while all the above mentioned shows were essentially tricked out historical exhibitions, this one’s a little different. As you might expect, the Mundo Pixar Experience is based around the films of the pioneering kids’ animation studio Pixar, and rather than a dry affair made up of stills and concept sketches, it’s basically a journey through a series of 14 rooms, one for each ‘universe’ in the Pixar filmography.  So we shrink down to toy size in Andy’s Room from Toy Story, explore the Monster, Inc Scare Floor, race into Flo’s Café from Cars to meet Lightning McQueen, visit the Headquarters of Riley’s emotions from Inside Out 2, and journey from Coco’s Land of the Living to the Land of the Dead. We’re promised each are will have immaculate vibes via beautiful design, exquisite ambient sound, and intriguingly ‘specially crafted scents’ to ensure each area smells just so (!). The show has played Brazil, Mexico, Belgium and Spain on a world tour on which it’s won praise for the beauty of its its sets and generally being an all round great photo opportunity, even if there has been some grumbles that there isn’t necessarily a huge amount to d