The best plays and musicals (in London and beyond) to book now
Yahoo is using AI to generate takeaways from this article. This means the info may not always match what's in the article. Reporting mistakes helps us improve the experience.Generate Key TakeawaysMark Rosenblatt’s Giant is currently towering over the West End, with the great John Lithgow as Roald Dahl, but what else should you be looking forward to this year? Well, there’s a new artistic director shaking things up at the National, Hollywood star Rachel Zegler playing the lead in Evita, and The Hunger Games, a theatrical experience which, great or terrible, is unlikely to resemble anything you’ve ever seen before.
Our chief theatre critic picks the best new shows on offer – both in London and around the country – as well as the crème de la crème of the West End’s long-running shows. So get booking! You can find discounted tickets on Telegraph Tickets for all of London’s long-running plays and musicals, such as Hamilton, Les Miserables, Harry Potter and the Cursed Child, and The Book of Mormon.
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AdvertisementAdvertisement#«R84ekkr8lb2m7nfblbH1» iframe AdvertisementAdvertisement#«Rg4ekkr8lb2m7nfblbH1» iframeThe best new London shows
The best West End classics
The best shows to see outside of London
The best theatre on right now, at a glance
Best play – Giant
Best family show – Oliver!
Best immersive theatre – A Midsummer Night’s Dream
Best funny show – Operation Mincemeat
The best new shows in London
Intimate Apparel
Devastatingly fine: Samira Wiley (centre) plays a seamstress in Intimate Apparel - Helen MurraySeven years ago, an unknown young director called Lynette Linton made her name overnight at the Donmar Warehouse with a blistering production of Sweat, a work by double Pulitzer Prize-winning American playwright Lynn Nottage. Now Linton, firmly established as one of the shining stars in the directorial firmament, returns to the scene of her triumph for a revival of Intimate Apparel – Nottage’s exquisite 2003 play about a black seamstress in 1905 New York. It is another devastatingly fine production, headed by a remarkable leading performance from Samira Wiley, known to global television viewers for The Handmaid’s Tale.
Read the full review of Intimate Apparel
AdvertisementAdvertisement#«R8fekkr8lb2m7nfblbH1» iframe AdvertisementAdvertisement#«Rgfekkr8lb2m7nfblbH1» iframeDonmar Warehouse, London WC2, booking until Aug 9
A Moon for the Misbegotten
Spellbinding: Michael Shannon and Ruth Wilson in A Moon for the Misbegotten - Marc BrennerIt’s three hours long, and barely anything happens, yet Rebecca Frecknall’s production of Eugene O’Neill’s loose sequel to Long Day’s Journey into Night is utterly spellbinding. It also contains some of the finest acting you are likely to see on a stage this year. Across an evening steeped in pathos, Ruth Wilson, Michael Shannon and a barely recognisable David Threlfall weave a kind of magic from the minutiae of their characters’ ordinary, hardscrabble lives.
Read the full review of A Moon for the Misbegotten
Almeida, London N1, booking until Aug 16
Fiddler on the Roof
Fiddler on the Roof has won three Oliviers - Marc BrennerFresh from winning three Olivier awards, Jordan Fein’s superb Regent’s Park revival of Fiddler on the Roof has been transplanted to form the big summer musical offering at the Barbican. Jerry Bock, Sheldon Harnick and Joseph Stein’s instant 1964 Broadway classic about a toiling shtetl milkman contending with five daughters and a world in transition at the turn of the 20th century always does a roaring trade, but this loving iteration merits packed houses.
AdvertisementAdvertisement#«R8rekkr8lb2m7nfblbH1» iframe AdvertisementAdvertisement#«Rgrekkr8lb2m7nfblbH1» iframeRead the full review of Fiddler on the Roof
Barbican Theatre, London EC2, booking until July 19
Book ticketsvia Tickets | Telegraph Media Group provided by London Theatre Direct
Giant
John Lithgow as Roald Dahl in Giant - Johan PerssonDon’t miss this second chance to see John Lithgow’s rightly acclaimed turn as Roald Dahl, caught up in a bitter anti-Semitism storm at the time of the publication of his 1983 book The Witches. This is a smart, funny, topically biting play by Mark Rosenblatt, directed by Nick Hytner, which allows Dahl’s trenchant criticisms of Israel and his most unsavoury opinions about Jews to come to the fore in the presence of his partner and (Jewish) publishing associates. It asks what the cut-off point is – if, indeed, any exists – between valid polemic and vile prejudice?
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Harold Pinter Theatre, London SW1, booking until Aug 2
A Midsummer Night’s Dream
David Moorst in A Midsummer Night’s Dream at The Bridge - Manuel HarlanBack in 2019, I gave five stars to Nicholas Hytner’s “immersive” production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream. His achievement was to take Shakespeare’s over-familiar comedy of romantic confusion – in which young lovers and bumbling am-dram actors come unstuck in the Athenian forest – and make it fun, funny, beautiful, revelatory and, yes, sexy. His master-stroke: magicking the action amid, and above, standing spectators (the rest seated), employing daring circusy high jinks. It is still the finest Dream I’ve ever seen and a shared reverie you never want to end.
Bridge Theatre. Booking until Aug 20
AdvertisementAdvertisement#«R9bekkr8lb2m7nfblbH1» iframe AdvertisementAdvertisement#«Rhbekkr8lb2m7nfblbH1» iframeRead the full review of A Midsummer Night’s Dream
Book ticketsvia Tickets | Telegraph Media Group provided by London Theatre Direct
Evita
Rachel Zegler performs ‘Don’t Cry For Me Argentina’ - A Garfitt/Invision/APAfter triumphing with Sunset Boulevard in London and New York, Jamie Lloyd returns his attention to his radical, stripped-back Evita and brings Andrew Lloyd Webber and Tim Rice’s 1978 modern classic to town. As seen at Regent’s Park in 2019, Margaret Thatcher’s favourite musical – about the seduction of power, and how you have to seduce to obtain it – was artfully arranged across a vast flight of steps, ensuring the choreography had a “one false move” edge to it. Rachel Zegler, the star of Disney’s recent live-action Snow White, makes her West End debut as the Argentinian diva.
London Palladium, W1, booking until Sept 6
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Till the Stars Come Down
Till the Stars Come Down: a tragicomedy about ordinary lives - Manuel HarlanFirst seen at the National in early 2024, Beth Steel’s entertaining and poignant play gives us a ringside view of an unravelling Mansfield family as one of three daughters – Sinead Matthews’s Sylvia – gets hitched to an entrepreneurial Pole called Marek – generating a tragicomedy about ordinary (white working-class) lives at a moment of personal stress and economic uncertainty.
Mansfield was part of the Red Wall, and is still – as the evening’s familial divisions make clear – contending with the legacy of the 1984 miners’ strike. While the domestic observational detail recalls Alan Ayckbourn at his comic best, the confidence and characters are Steel’s own. Bijan Sheibani directs.
Theatre Royal Haymarket, July 1-Sept 27
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Inter Alia
Inter Alia marks a debut for Rosamund PikeRosamund Pike makes her National Theatre debut in Inter Alia, a new work from Suzie Miller, who wrote the theatrical triumph Prima Facie. Killing Eve star Jodie Comer was a tour de force in that one-woman play about the legal system and sexual assault. Not only was it a critical and commercial success on the West End and Broadway in 2022 and 2023 – winning two Oliviers and a Tony – but a film version of the production is now being used to help train judges in Northern Ireland. Will Miller score another hit with her new legal-themed drama? All we know so far is that Pike, taking on her first stage role in 15 years, will play a High Court judge who has “to reckon her professional life and role as wife, mother, friend and feminist”.
The National’s Lyttelton Theatre, July 10-Sept 13 (nationaltheatre.org.uk)
Brigadoon
Brigadoon hasn’t been seen since 1988 - FEAST CreativeWhen Lerner and Loewe’s first hit was revived in the West End in 1988, the Telegraph declared: “[it] looks and sounds rather the worse for wear”. It hasn’t been seen in London since. For his inaugural production as artistic director of Regent’s Park, Drew McOnie has got Scottish playwright Rona Munro to rustle up a new spin on the tale of a highlands village that magically appears once every 100 years. In her version, two Second World War fighter pilots en route home, and two sisters preparing for a wedding, meet in the fabled locale. McOnie will provide fresh choreography, under the influence of the original dances created by Agnes De Mille.
AdvertisementAdvertisement#«Ra7ekkr8lb2m7nfblbH1» iframe AdvertisementAdvertisement#«Ri7ekkr8lb2m7nfblbH1» iframeRegent’s Park Open Air Theatre, Aug 2-Sept 20
Book ticketsvia Tickets | Telegraph Media Group provided by London Theatre Direct
Born with Teeth
Edward Bluemel as William Shakespeare and Ncuti Gatwa as Christopher Marlowe in Born with TeethNcuti Gatwa – fresh, or perhaps battle-hardened from Doctor Who – plays Christopher Marlowe in Liz Duff Adams’s new work about the playwright’s complex and rivalrous relationship with William Shakespeare. It’s one of those ideas where you wonder: why wasn’t this made into a play years ago, and so confident is the RSC of Born With Teeth’s success that it has bypassed Stratford and is heading straight to London’s West End. Edward Bluemel plays the Bard, while Daniel Evans directs.
Wyndham’s Theatre, Aug 13-Nov 1
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The Producers
The Producers: Andy Nyman (Max Bialystock) and Marc Antolin (Leo Bloom) - Manuel HarlanA welcome chance to see Mel Brooks’ Tony award-laden musical version of his much-loved 1967 film, as revived to acclaim at the Menier last year by Patrick Marber. The Garrick provided a home for Brooks’ adaptation of Young Frankenstein a while back, which did decently, but The Producers is in a different league.
Andy Nyman reprises his turn as Max Bialystock, the ageing impresario who hatches a scheme with his adopted accountant sidekick Leo Bloom (Marc Antolin) to mount an all-singing, all-dancing celebration of the Führer – Springtime for Hitler – as a “surefire” means of engineering a flop, leaving them with piles of unused investment. The big set-pieces are delivered with twinkling, taste-defying gusto and watch out too for the ludicrous sight of Bialystock’s old-lady investors hoofing it up on Zimmer-frames.
Garrick theatre, Aug 30-Feb 21
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Punch
Punch makes its West End debut - New Key Art PressIn 2011, Nottinghamshire youth Jacob Dunne killed 28-year-old paramedic James Hodgkinson with a single punch in a moment of mindless thuggery. Dunne later turned his life around and wrote a memoir, Right From Wrong, which was subsequently turned into a play (supported by the parents of the victim) by James Graham at Nottingham Playhouse and is now making its West End debut. David Shields is terrific as Dunne, while Julie Hesmondhalgh as Hodgkinson’s mother visibly struggles to rationalise the incomprehensible, a journey towards compassion and understanding written in worry-lines and faltering smiles. We go with her all the way.
Apollo, Shaftesbury Avenue, Sept 22-Nov 29
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Hamlet
Hiran Abeysekera takes on Hamlet - National TheatreSri Lankan-born Hiran Abeysekera was career-makingly brilliant as the castaway hero of Life of Pi, in Sheffield and the West End. Then he impressed once again in The Father and the Assassin, a returning production at the National of the play about the man who killed Gandhi – in which he took the lead as the latter, Nathuram Godse.
The success of that show was a boost for director Indhu Rubasingham, now the theatre’s Artistic Director. So it seems fitting that Abeysekera has been cast in her inaugural reason, and in a role heavily identified with the National. Peter O’Toole’s Olivier-directed Hamlet launched the theatre in 1963, and since then, whether showcasing the talent of Albert Finney, Daniel Day-Lewis, Ian Charleson, Simon Russell Beale or Rory Kinnear, it has been a touchstone for the NT’s Shakespearean credentials.
National’s Lyttelton theatre (nationaltheatre.org.uk), Sept 25-Nov 22
The Hunger Games: on Stage
Conor McPherson has adapted the first book from Suzanne Collins’s best-selling dystopian novel series about a gladiatorial televised spectacle involving youths battling to survive at all costs - with due reference to the first film in the hugely successful Lionsgate blockbuster franchise. Directed by Matthew Dunster, this world premiere live show should push the boundaries of entertainment: the show is being presented in a special, in the round 1,200 seat venue in Canary Wharf. Dunster, who scored a big hit with 2:22 A Ghost Story, has vowed: “We want to bring audiences something as impactful and edgy as [the] novel and as passionate and exciting as the movie.” I’d be inclined to take his word for it.
Troubadour Canary Wharf theatre, London (thehungergamesonstage.com), Oct 20-Feb 15
The best West End classics
Oliver!
Oliver! is back after a 14-year absence - Johan PerssonAfter a 14-year absence, it’s clear that the West End and Oliver! are getting along all over again; booking for Cameron Mackintosh and Matthew Bourne’s rousing, irresistible revival has now been extended to March 2026. For all its Dickensian gloom, Lionel Bart’s musical is so fundamentally ebullient it’s like bottled joy: guaranteed to put a spring in your step. Form an orderly queue and prepare to receive saving dollops of theatrical delight.
Read the full review of Oliver!
Gielgud Theatre
Booking until: Mar 29, 2026
Book ticketsvia Tickets | Telegraph Media Group provided by London Theatre Direct
My Neighbour Totoro
My Neighbour Totoro: The stage adaptation of Studio Ghibli’s 1988 animated feature - Manuel HarlanThis stage adaptation of the 1988 animated feature My Neighbour Totoro was a monster smash for the RSC even before it started previews. Hayao Miyazaki’s tale follows Satsuki and Mei, the daughters (aged 10 and four) of a university professor, Tatsuo. What fans loved about the film has been beautifully served here. The Gruffalo-like Totoro, who is befriended by the tiny but indomitable Mei, is magnificently humongous and the wow-factor of his spectacular appearances is worth the price of admission alone.
Gillian Lynne Theatre
Booking until: Mar 29 2026
Book ticketsvia Tickets | Telegraph Media Group provided by London Theatre Direct
Hercules
Hercules the musical: a triumphant version of Disney’s 1997 riff on the myth - Matt CrockettDisney stage adaptations tend to be conceived with a ruthless eye on the film’s pre-existing fanbase. Not so this theatrical version of the 1997 animated riff on the Hercules myth, which is pointedly – and triumphantly – aimed at families with young children rather than the original’s numerous disciples. Adaptors Kwame Kwei-Armah, the Young Vic’s former artistic director, and Tony award-winning script writer Robert Horn may have made a few transgressive changes, but the fleet-footed result has retained the original’s goofy knockabout humour and refusal to take itself seriously.
Read the full review of Hercules
Theatre Royal Drury Lane
Booking until: Mar 28 2026
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Les Misérables
Some 40 years after it received its premiere (critics, sniffy at the time, have been forced to eat humble pie ever since), Les Misérables is not only the longest-running musical in the West End but is still one of the hottest tickets in town. Old-fashioned though this take on Victor Hugo’s sprawling 1862 epic may seem in its mixture of high-powered ideas and gut-wrenching emotions, it’s a show that feels lastingly revolutionary. It represents what theatre should be.
Sondheim Theatre
Booking until: Mar 28 2026
Book ticketsvia Tickets | Telegraph Media Group provided by London Theatre Direct
Stranger Things: The First Shadow
Stranger Things: The First Shadow is a successful spin-off to Netflix’s phenomenal sci-fi series - Manuel HarlanThis stage spin-off to Netflix’s phenomenal sci-fi series provides a much-needed shot in the arm for the West End. With key input from Stranger Things creators the Duffer Brothers, the Fifties-set prequel manages to match the series’ mind-blowing nature. The main storyline takes us to Hawkins when trouble started brewing, in 1959; sleuthing high-school youths Jim Hopper and Joyce Maldonado (known to fans from their older incarnations in the series played by David Harbour and Winona Ryder) investigate the mysterious violent death of pets, and fumble their way towards the real culprit. It’s barely possible to spoil the impact of this show which operates at a frequency that fizzes synapses and makes you feel you’ve entered a shadowy, dreamy realm.
Phoenix Theatre
Booking until: Nov 9
Book ticketsvia Tickets | Telegraph Media Group provided by London Theatre Direct
Hamilton
Hamilton: The most talked-about musical of the centuryLin-Manuel Miranda’s show is the most talked-about musical of the century – and for good reason. As much as it offers an alternately witty and stirring history lesson, charting the bullet-fast rise of founding father Alexander Hamilton (c1755 to 1804) and his demise from a duelling shot, it maps out the emergence of the global order we have so come to depend on. Miranda does things with rap so nifty that even people who hate rap will relent. Believe every single word of the hype.
Victoria Palace Theatre
Booking until: Mar 28 2026
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The Phantom of the Opera
Like any indestructible artwork, The Phantom of the Opera plugs into myth. From Caliban to Quasimodo to Frankenstein’s monster, the shunned repulsive figure with beauty on the inside has always been able to reach out and yank at our heartstrings. Andrew Lloyd Webber’s sumptuous tunes, so too does this Phantom. Lloyd Webber’s epic tearjerker, which reopened at Her Majesty’s Theatre in 2021, has to be seen in all its kitsch, gothic glory.
His Majesty’s Theatre
Booking until: Mar 28 2026
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Cabaret
Hannah Dodd as Sally Bowles in Cabaret - Marc BrennerRebecca Frecknall’s production of Cabaret became a kill-for-a-ticket theatrical triumph when it launched in 2021 with Eddie Redmayne and Jessie Buckley in the lead roles. The cast has changed multiple times since then – Hannah Dodd and Rob Madge now star as Sally Bowles and the Emcee – but this revival is as electrifying as ever. It affirms the sensuous joy of performance and re-asserts the ability of Kander and Ebb’s 1966 classic, set in Weimar Germany amid the spectres of rising fascism, to send shivers down the spine. Never mind “Willkommen, bienvenue, welcome”. I’d say, dig like your life depended on it into your pockets.
Kit Kat Club at the Playhouse Theatre
Booking until: Mar 28 2026
Book ticketsvia Tickets | Telegraph Media Group provided by London Theatre Direct
Operation Mincemeat
Operation Mincemeat: ‘An inventive gem of a musical’ - Matt CrockettBased on one of the Allies’ most startling counter-intelligence ruses of the entire Second World War, this inventive gem of a musical is a delight. The operation involved a dead body being planted with fake documents so that the Germans would think the Allies were planning on invading Sardinia instead of Sicily. What the show has in winning spades is a Pythonesque delight in irreverence that doesn’t short-change the intellect, delineating the journeys each character goes on, the social transformation the war engendered, and the pathos attending the macabre plot.
Fortune Theatre
Booking until: Feb 28 2026
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Back to the Future: The Musical
Back to the Future: The Musical is a magnificent feel-good triumph - Sean Ebsworth BarnesBack to the Future was one of the biggest and best-loved Hollywood films of the Eighties. Michael J Fox made his name as Marty McFly, the skateboarding Eighties high-schooler propelled from the fictional town of Hill Valley to 1955 thanks to a plutonium-powered DeLorean. Turning the film into a musical shouldn’t have worked, but the result is a magnificent feel-good triumph. Thanks to video and illusionist wizardry, the steam-spouting DeLorean is the main star. Is it the most sophisticated musical around? No, but it’s a no less exhilarating all-American entertainment drive-thru than Hamilton.
Adelphi Theatre
Booking until: Jan 3 2026
Book ticketsvia Tickets | Telegraph Media Group provided by London Theatre Direct
Six
Composers Toby Marlow and Lucy Moss completed their witty, magpie-minded sonic onslaught about Henry VIII’s six wives while in their final year at Cambridge (2016-17); it has since become a theatrical phenomenon and they deserve the riches, opportunities and acclaim that have come their way. Six is a marvellous show, dripping with invention and intelligence, and one which brings not just happiness in the moment but hope for the future of the British musical.
Vaudeville Theatre
Booking until: Jun 28 2026
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The best shows to see outside of London
Top Hat, Chicester
American director/ choreographer Kathleen Marshall delivered the goods, and then some, when she brought her upliftingly goofy revival of Anything Goes to the Barbican. Now she turns her attention to Top Hat, the 2011 stage show derived from the much-loved 1935 Irving Berlin musical romcom starring Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers.
American actor Phillip Attmore makes his UK debut in the Astaire role of dancer Jerry Travers, while Lucy St Louis takes on the Rogers role of Dale Tremont; the former pursues the latter whose resistance is motored by a misunderstanding. Never mind the logic – strike up the band; the evening not only features divine music from the film (Cheek to Cheek), but a host of other Berlin standards such as Let’s Face the Music and Dance.
Chichester Festival Theatre (cft.org.uk), July 14-Sept 6
Ralph Fiennes Season, Bath
Fiennes joins Miranda Raison to star as Henry Irving and Ellen Terry, titans of the Victorian theatre - Matt HumphreyRalph Fiennes nobly nails his colours to the regional theatre mast once again, lending his energy to a bold season of work in Bath, spearheaded by a new play from David Hare, Grace Pervades; Fiennes joins Miranda Raison (Spooks) to star as Henry Irving and Ellen Terry, titans of the Victorian theatre (July 3–19).
The season continues with an As You Like It directed by Fiennes, starring Gloria Obianyo as Rosalind and Harriet Walter as Jaques (Aug 15–Sept 6), and concludes with another new play, Rebecca Lenkiewicz’s Small Hotel, in which Fiennes plays an unravelling TV presenter (Aug 3–18). Outside the Fiennes Season, there’s Hedda, a particularly noteworthy new studio version of Ibsen’s Hedda Gabler from Matthew Dunster, starring Lily Allen as the terminally bored housewife (July 25–Aug 23).
Theatre Royal Bath (theatreroyal.org.uk), July 3-Aug 23
The Last Stand of Mrs Mary Whitehouse, Nottingham
Maxine Peake in The Last Stand of Mrs Mary WhitehouseIn 1976, Gay News published a poem by James Kirkup entitled The Love That Dares Not Speak Its Name which was written from the viewpoint of a Roman Centurion who describes having sex with Jesus after the Crucifixion. Immediately, morality campaigner Mary Whitehouse wrote a letter to the archbishops of York and Canterbury saying that: “If I did not do something to end this sacrilege then I would carry the shame of this abdication for the rest of my life”. Within a month of the publisher being successfully prosecuted, a committee was formed to campaign for the abolition of the law against blasphemy – an issue that is now very much back in the public discourse. Maxine Peake stars as Whitehouse. Sarah Frankcom directs.
Nottingham Playhouse (nottinghamplayhouse.co.uk), Sept 5-27
Dancing at Lughnasa, Sheffield
Elizabeth Newman launches her inaugural season as artistic director of the Sheffield Crucible with Brian Friel’s most popular, and arguably finest, work which transports us to mid-1930s County Donegal and a world on the poignant cusp of change. Capturing the comradeship and frustrations of the five Mundy sisters – as recalled in later years by their nephew Michael – the action takes place as the annual harvest festival (named after the pagan god Lugh) looms and sensuous sounds fill the air, courtesy of a new Marconi radio. In the most famous scene, wordless ecstasy seizes the women as, one by one, they cast chores and Christian rectitude aside, and dance in their kitchen to a ceilidh band: “Dancing as if language no longer existed because words were no longer necessary…”
Crucible Theatre, Sheffield (sheffieldtheatres.co.uk), Sept 13-Oct 4
Cyrano de Bergerac, Stratford-upon-Avon
Adrian Lester as Cyrano de BergeracAdrian Lester has shone in Shakespeare since his first career-strides – as Rosalind in Cheek by Jowl’s all-male As You Like It. So his RSC debut is a turn up for the books. He’ll take the lead in Edmond Rostand’s time-honoured tragicomedy about a soldier with a rapier wit and a poetic gift but a protruding proboscis, who woos his beloved cousin Roxane on behalf of an inarticulate yet handsome cadet Christian. Jamie Lloyd’s acclaimed experimental version in 2019, with a daringly unadorned James McAvoy, teased out the work’s themes about the nature of desire, and self-image, to the hilt; let’s see what director Simon Evans, adapting with the Grime poet Debris Stevenson, has come up with.
RSC Swan Theatre, Stratford-upon-Avon (rsc.org.uk), Sept 27-Nov 15
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Unbeatable in their sheer excitement, The Best Plays and Musicals (in London as well beyond) to book now embody a blend of unprecedented creativity combined with breathtaking performances that captivate audiences worldwide.
Seeing a broad collection of the finest plays and musicals, both in London' never-ceasing West End stages as well abroad—is to hoof it on an unforgettable transnational theater adventure. Book now for euphoric evenings under starlit skies at your next must!
