(I think I only went to the theatre in London three times as a child and one of those times was to see a pre-fame David Tennant in a Peter Shaffer play and another to see a pre-fame Michael Sheen in a Peter Shaffer play)

I’m so old now that I saw the last major UK production of Peter Shaffer’s Black Comedy WHEN I WAS AT SCHOOL, with a young David Tennant in the lead! Long story short, it is back and it is still very funny www.timeout.com/london/theat...

I thought Beetlejuice the Musical was fine really but I just couldn’t get past how much they’d changed the source material www.timeout.com/london/news/...

a little exclusive on the line up for Shedinburgh, which goes on sale today. It has so much stuff in its it’s really hard to pick out highlights but basically a sort of greatest hits + rarities of every major leftfield Fringe artist of the last 20 years or so www.timeout.com/uk/news/excl...

a question that would have killed in the high Theatre Twitter era and will doubtless get crickets here: does anyone know what the AC sitch is at the Prince Edward Theatre?

The Last Man at Southwark Playhouse Elephant is very silly and could clearly be a lot better, but also how many other one man/women Korean zombie apocalypse rock musicals are you ever actually going to SEE? www.timeout.com/london/theat...

Alexander Zeldin’s CARE at the Young Vic is very decent and has a wonderful turn from Linda Bassett www.timeout.com/london/theat...

Streets (one person I spoke to yesterday who saw it at the weekend) are saying the extremely long and mawkish alternate future sequence Juliet sees at the end has been massively trimmed down! That would be great if so

I have loved Equus since my GCSE English teacher decided to make us study it for some insane reason and the Menier’s revival is great, intensity overcoming some of the datedness, I’ve give Lindsay Posner some stick over the years but this really plays to his strengths www.timeout.com/london/theat...

twitter is currently just wall to wall people arguing over a Christopher Nolan trailer

a thing I wasn’t expecting to be good that was: The Sheep Detectives, which we only went to because it was picking up good word of mouth in Y3

honestly just happy to see The Golden Notebook on here, probably my favourite novel and I’m not sure I've even met anybody else who actually *likes* it

I genuinely had no idea until I looked up just now that in DC you’re not allowed out between 11pm and 6am if you’re 17 or under! What a country!

obsessed by the fact the burlesque musical is coming back to london and it remains entirely unclear once again who is directing it other than ‘almost certainly not the guy who directed it last year’

a Stephen Colbert-penned LOTR film set 14 years after Frodo went to the Gray Havens sounds genuinely, groundbreakingly unnecessary

this is the thing about Streeting, nobody likes him and he’ll probably lose his seat at the next election anyway, even setting personal thoughts on his merits aside, he seems like a pretty bonkers choice of leader

Sherlock Holmes at the Open Air Theatre was great! As much as anything else a really thoughtful play about Imperial London, and Joshua James is an absolutely superb Sherlock. It feels like they could easily do a sequel! And they should! www.timeout.com/london/theat...

a delight to catch up with Jay from the Yard and ask him how the fuck he managed to get Ian McKellen doing a Simon Stephens play in the reopening season www.timeout.com/london/news/...

as one might imagine, Gary Oldman is jolly good in Krapp’s Last Tape and his blank stare will join Michael Gambon’s look of pure horror in my 'last moments of KLT that will haunt me forever’ list www.timeout.com/london/theat...

much as I love the idea of a resurgent millband challenging the other leaders to a bacon sarnie eat off, emerging the victor, then leading us into a glorious zero carbon future, I worry that would not be the outcome

Good to see the LibDems gradually rebuilding the Kingdom of Wessex one shire at a time under King Ædward of Davey. Just Hamtunscīr, Wiltunscir and the Vale of Teste to conquer before the kingdom is reunited to fight back the Reforme hordes of Mercia and Essex

right off to feebly attempt to stop Bromley going Reform

genuinely very happy for SNL UK! Although now intrigued as to whether there will now be a cull of the cast a la US SNL deadline.com/2026/05/satu...

can’t really be arsed to vote but the polling station is next to Big Sainbury’s so…

The Waves at Jermyn Street was nice! The doubtless magnificently challenging Katie Mitchell adaptation was before my time but it’s a definite virtue of Floras Wilson Brown’s version that it’s v accessible, plus it has Ria Zmitrowicz sneaking her way back into theatre www.timeout.com/london/theat...

I caught up with Tender at Soho Theatre and on the basis of two plays only I'm going to declare that nobody writes about contemporary masculinity with the sheer out-there creativity of Dave Harris, and Matthew Xia is the perfect enabler. Good stuff etc www.timeout.com/london/theat...

a real treat for all my theatre followers: I went to the new PAW Patrol area at Chessington and apparently gave my ‘honest’ review, as opposed to my normal reviews which are very corrupt www.timeout.com/london/news/...

my only take on the tonys is that that waiting for godot set looked sick, how can they not nominate that

idly looking up my local election candidates and there is genuinely fuck all info about any of them anywhere, the first Labour candidate has quite a nice statement (from when he stood in Salisbury two years ago that still has the word 'Salisbury’ everywhere), the Greens don’t even have photos

Harborcoat - REM E-bow the Letter - REM Life and How to Live It - REM Carnival of Sorts (Box Cars) - REM Gardening at Night - REM Radio Free Europe - REM The River - Springsteen An Endless Sky of Honey - Kate Bush The Past is a Grotesque Animal - of Montreal Station to Station - Bowie (lol)

particularly enjoyed the SNL UK Mario and pork sketches

is Michael Sheen’s reinvention as ‘Guy who says yes to everything’ part of the Welsh National Theatre’s business model

at the risk of sounding thick, is the filibuster rule genuinely just ‘if you want to stop something enough, talk for a very long time’ because that is obviously mental

is the Shakespeare trend of 2026 going to be ‘lovely productions because we’re bored of the horrors? maybe! in any case is second Midsummer Night’s Dream in three months is a delight www.timeout.com/london/theat...

The best open air theatre shows to see in London this summer

hmmm thats seems… sudden, I was somewhat confused as to how the Elvis show seems to weather all the terrible publicity, but maybe it did not

there’s some powerful stuff in Mass at the Donmar but it feels a bit overshadowed by James Graham’s not-dissimilar Punch, and it sometimes feels like it’s preaching at an imaginary American audience www.timeout.com/london/theat...

Jamie Lloyd posting a lot of random Godot stuff, could be a mildly hubristic pre-Tonys thing, or…

best new London theatre openings in May feat Gary Oldman, Beetlejuice and indeed, more www.timeout.com/london/news/...

QI that the Old Vic all female Glengarry clearly in large part exists because Marber intended to gender flip his Broadway production after the first cast left but it never actually came to fruition www.timeout.com/london/news/...

hmmm *very boring voice* just saw xbox dropped the price of their ultimate pass back to something fractionally less insane, I am happy you were punished for your greed lads

no interest in seeing the Jackson film but fascinated by idea they might do a sequel, like what would that actually be about?

the first theatre show I ever saw in London as a schoolchild was Michael Sheen in Amadeus at the Old Vic so a weird thrill that he’s returning to it as Salieri next year www.timeout.com/london/news/...

lol this is so generationally stupid I kind of want it to happen www.theguardian.com/football/202...

Happy Shakespeare’s birthday and also apparently deathday!

oh god I have just been informed of billington’s (intentional?) ragebait ranking of every single Shakespeare play in today’s Guardian www.theguardian.com/stage/ng-int...

I saw David Bowie: You’re Not Alone at the Lightroom and there was some annoying stuff and it’s kind of silly to try and do a one hour Bowie show, but the bits that were good were bordering on religious www.timeout.com/london/thing...

the Unicorn/RSC Midsummer Night’s Dream is great for primary schoolers who couldn’t handle 2.5hrs of theatre, I think much older than that and you might as well take them to one of London’s many, many full length productions but it’s cute! www.timeout.com/london/theat...

A cynical part of me feels like Between the River and the Sea is a fairly ‘safe’ artistic response to a post-Oct 7 world for places like the Court and Maxim Gorki to programme, but it is also a likeable hour of autobiographical theatre www.timeout.com/london/theat...

we were discussing 'parents using social media' at work the other day and I'm very thankful mine don’t at all, but basically all my Gen Z colleagues’ do and seem to be massively into slop