London theatre reviews

Read our latest Time Out theatre reviews and find out what our London theatre team made of the city's new plays, musicals and theatre shows

Andrzej Lukowski
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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 2026.

A-Z of West End shows.

  • Theatre & Performance
  • 4 out of 5 stars
  • Recommended

The parameters for judging a stage adaption of the horror film franchise Paranormal Activity are clearly quite different to, say, a production of King LearIt’s not the only consideration, but judgement does essentially boil down to one main question: is it scary? To which the answer here is a frazzled ‘oh my, yes’.

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  • Theatre & Performance

If you think a two-hander drama about Elizabethan legends Christopher Marlowe and William Shakespeare having a sexy, dangerous time while trying to write a play together sounds a bit slash fiction-y then you would have the number of Born with Teeth, a new drama by US playwright Liz Duffy Evans.

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  • Theatre & Performance

Time Out doesn’t as a rule review shows that aren’t in London. But I am so aggressively smack bang in the centre of the Venn diagram of ‘people who like Shakespeare’s 1599 play Hamlet’ and ‘people who like Radiohead’s 2003 album Hail to the Thief’ that when the opportunity to attend the Manchester opening night of the stage mash-up Hamlet Hail to the Thief came up I felt obliged to go.

  • Cocktail bars
  • Haggerston
  • 3 out of 5 stars
  • Recommended

A hole in the fabric of space and time has opened up in Shoreditch, probably not for the first time. However, this particular wormhole leads to a pristine alien planet named Avora, in which the humanlike natives protect themselves from the planet’s toxic atmosphere by knocking back a substance called lumenol, which tastes exactly like good old earthen booze and is served in delicious cocktail form.

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