can’t handle this appalling heat

Evening All Afternoon at the Donmar is a very solid 90 minute two hander of the sort I think Americans write in the hope of a Broadway payday, but Erin Kellyman is sensational, best 'screen actor turns out to be amazing on stage' moment since Jodie Comer www.timeout.com/london/theat...

Bird Grove at Hampstead Theatre is enjoyable period drama MOR but with a really genuinely touching love story between a father and his daughter at its heart, Elizabeth Dulau has definitely got 'troubled but moving father-daughter relationships' nailed www.timeout.com/london/theat...

huh the Old Vic’s A Christmas Carol is returning for its TENTH year – the announcement comes from Warchus (who is tbf its director) which strongly suggests no Goold programming until 2027

genuinely incredible work from Jim and the Londoncentric team and a heartening suggestion that things are only maybe 98% fucked open.substack.com/pub/londonce...

the most depressing thing I read about the imminent Manchester by-election is a guardian article where lots of voters were saying they didn’t really agree with anything Reform were actually offering but thought they deserved a chance nonetheless

my convoluted favourite thing about this is that it’s a clubbing jukebox musical called God is a DJ that will feature a song called God is a DJ that isn’t actually the Faithless song God is a DJ, which presumably people would quite like to have heard in a clubbing jukebox musical called God is a DJ

I was today years old when I discovered Fanta started life as a Nazi Coca-Cola substitute

Oh, the grand old duke of york He ██████████████████ He ██████████████████ And he ██████████████████

I feel like probably this is actually quite a lot better for the monarchy than not doing it..? especially if Charles personally decapitates him with some sort of fabulous antique blade with a sly coded meaning

is that Jamie Lloyd announcement just going to be Much Ado goes to Broadway?

Chadwick Boseman was clearly a hugely gifted man and I'm glad his 2005 play Deep Azure has got a new life but it could probably have done with an edit www.timeout.com/london/theat...

I appear up be going on Today to talk about Erivo Dracula at 8.40 if that’s the sort of thing you are into/explicitly want to avoid

genuinely a big fan of Kip Williams as a concept but Dracula really doesn’t work that well. Cynthia Erivo fine but she’s just a cog in the machine etc www.timeout.com/london/news/...

Also (it’s half-term, sorry) I went to the new Horniman exhibition Voyage to the Deep which was conceptually a total mess but actually very fun for kids so etc www.timeout.com/london/kids/...

I reviewed the Aardman exhibition at the Young V&A and it was delightful, even if somewhat bemusing that a show very obviously aimed at kids had been almost entirely booked out by thirtysomething creative couples www.timeout.com/london/kids/...

loved the thirstiness of the Hugh Bonneville audience but Shadowlands is ultimately too light on actual sex, it puts CS Lewis on an improbably chaste pedestal that clearly oversimplifies him www.timeout.com/london/theat...

eldest has just read The Weirdstone of Brisingamen and The Moon of Gomrath and then I explained what happened in Boneland to him and he looked at me like I was mad

I normally start aggressively doubting myself when I like something that everyone else hates, but I think in this instance the NT’s Man and Boy is simply about as ‘me’ coded as theatre gets

am I the only person in this country who thinks the weather's been absolutely fine so far this year

noooooo not Dawson!

Great review of MAN AND BOY @nationaltheatre.org.uk that expresses very much my view of this revelatory production that frees Rattigan from scenographic conservatism. @mrlukowski.bsky.social www.timeout.com/london/theat...

five stars from me for Anthony Lau’s wild ride free jazz Rattigan, with an incredible performance from Ben Daniels www.timeout.com/london/theat...

lol this is the most American sentence ever written - yes, what could you possibly do with half a bottle of wine other than throw it out or cook with it

wow this is genuinely upsettingly horrible – the staff of PlayStation magazine in 1998 soliciting bath pics of readers’ girlfriends in exchange for prizes

friends fear he’s going through an ‘early Manics phase’

Not only do I admire the commitment here but the write up is also very funny: 'now let me talk about farfalle: farfalle is not pasta. farfalle is a design flaw someone decided to mass produce' www.reddit.com/r/Cooking/co...

that McKellen speech going viral: yes, great to know Shakespeare/Hand D was a dude; but really just delighted (a small, liberal corner of) the internet is being exposed to some some really top notch VERSE SPEAKING

Lost Atoms by Frantic Assembly is very enjoyable, a soapy story of a couple’s ups and downs given a big extra kick by the fact they spend the whole time clambering over a gigantic filing cabinet www.timeout.com/london/theat...

I think Tom Stoppard’s Arcadia is probably the perfect play, which doesn’t necessarily make it that easy to stage well, but fundamentally it is pretty amazing to have Arcadia back www.timeout.com/london/theat...

my big question about the christopher nolan helen of troy casting is what is helen of troy doing in the odyssey

tbf the great British public would probably tolerate actual fascism if he was proposing £2 off a pint but 5p is… basically meaningless, surely

a fun fact about REM (the band) is that their name doesn’t actually stand for anything and indeed they had to tell off some early promoter or other for writing 'rapid eye movement' on a concert poster

Sadie S will be playing the lead role in the Royal Court transfer of John Proctor is the Villain! No, not THAT Sadie S www.timeout.com/london/theat...

not that it’s that important but where would Olivier’s plaque BE? it doesn’t seem to say anywhere

this was all before my time so maybe I'm lacking context but sort of mad that nobody seemed to really mind that Boney M were basically exactly the same idea as Milli Vanilli by exactly the same guy and nobody seemed to mind particularly

very much enjoyed Tim Crouch’s extremely Tim Crouch-y Tempest, though assume some people will have absolutely hated it www.timeout.com/london/theat...

is now a good time to say that when I went on a press trip to china a few years back the person organising it didn’t want to say I was a journalist on my visa so she put me down as a cannery owner, because in Fallout 4 there is a character called Lukowski who has a cannery

I wrote this song on Saturday, recorded it yesterday and released it to you today in response to the state terror being visited on the city of Minneapolis. It’s dedicated to the people of Minneapolis, our innocent immigrant neighbors and in memory of Alex Pretti and Renee Good. Stay free

I reviewed Riz Ahmed’s Hamlet! A fascinating attempt to really do Hamlet AS A FILM (as opposed to a bunch of theatre people bunging a play on screen), it’s good – and gloriously intense – but in trying to transcend the play it sort of trips over the play www.timeout.com/movies/hamle...

might collar Rupert Goold at American Psycho and demand he makes Old Vic shows do publicity images on a consistent basis

five million years after everyone else I have finally caught up with Jack Holden’s KENREX, which ends its run this weekend and yes it is very good www.timeout.com/london/theat...

some pretty spiffy names from the NT, sort of interesting they’ve gone for the whole 'year of work’ angle when actually most of the big stuff could be classified as a summer season www.timeout.com/london/news/...

am at the launch of the natural history museum Pokémon shop and feel like everyone else here is a Pokémon influencer

suspect parents will respond to Luke Norris’s Guess How Much I Love You? at the Royal Court differently to non parents, but while #blessed to have not been in the characters’ exact boat I thought this was an exquisite play about how harrowing early parenthood can be www.timeout.com/london/theat...

lol what a pussy

aware the excellent Dante or Die continue to make fine site specific work, but maybe because of the comparative scale and comparatively normie plot, the return of their I Do gave me a delightful flashback to the sort of glory days of ‘site specific’ as a buzz thing www.timeout.com/london/theat...

alarming feeling that actually you do got to hand it to Michael O’Leary?

this just seems like a weird greek-statue-as-profile-picture-guy cry for attention

the top ticket price for Jesus Christ Superstar ft Sam Ryder is £395 with no snacks or anything, which seems faintly insane