Heading to a West End show is exciting enough. The last thing you need is a panic jog down Shaftesbury Avenue because dinner ran late. Luckily, London’s theatre neighbourhood is packed with places that know the drill: feed you well, feed you fast and send you off before the curtain rises. Below is a down-to-earth […]
If you think you know Fiddler on the Roof (if you can hum the opening bars of ‘If I Were a Rich Man’ or picture Topol’s Tevye, arms akimbo beneath a painted shtetl sky), prepare to have your expectations upended at the Barbican. Jordan Fein’s revival, fresh from its sold-out run at Regent’s Park Open […]
Shucked breezes into Regent’s Park Open Air Theatre like a shot of sunshine after a week of drizzle. It is a loud and proud musical comedy that mixes folk tale silliness with a contemporary wink; part hoedown, part stand-up set, all set to a country-pop score. You sit beneath the trees, stare at a crooked […]
The Magician’s Table is billed as a wake for fictional magician Dieter Roterburg. Candlelight flickers across velvet drapes, a lone accordion sighs in the corner and ‘mourners’ clutch cocktails while swapping stories about a man who never existed. The production is not a play in the traditional sense but an immersive close-up magic event. There […]
Roald Dahl created some of literature’s most fantastical giants and witches, but in the new West End drama Giant, the beloved storyteller himself becomes the focal point of a monstrous moral tale. This Olivier Award-winning play is directed by Nicholas Hytner and marks the playwriting debut of Mark Rosenblatt. Giant dramatises a scandalous episode from […]
Here We Are is the final musical by the late Stephen Sondheim, currently playing at the Lyttelton Theatre. Part musical, part surrealist play, part social farce, it’s the sort of project only Sondheim would attempt, and in many ways, it’s perplexing. The piece was developed by Sondheim and playwright David Ives, drawing from two Luis […]
The Rise and Fall of Margaret Thatcher is a sharply drawn political drama that slices through the myth and legend of Britain’s first female Prime Minister with theatrical flair. Written by Edmund Green and directed by Harry Medawar, the play eschews hagiography and hatchet job, instead offering a nuanced, often darkly comic exploration of the […]
The Frogs, Stephen Sondheim’s rarely revived musical, is back in London. This production, directed with a knowing wink by Georgie Rankcom, offers a riotous, if unwieldy, journey through the underworld. The Frogs is a musical comedy with a lineage as odd as its premise. Originally penned by Aristophanes in 405 BC as a satirical play, […]
Heading to a West End show isn’t just a night out, it’s a live, shared experience where every person in the room helps keep the magic alive. The actors give it their all, the backstage crew works in near-silence, and your fellow audience members want to get lost in the story. 1. Why good manners […]
1. Curtain-up on twenty-first-century theatrewear Gone are the days when a night at Drury Lane demanded tails and opera gloves. Today’s London theatres welcome everyone from hoodie-clad students to tuxedoed gala-goers, often in the same row. Officially, there is no enforced dress code in the West End, yet many of us still enjoy dressing “one […]