Local News
Lily Allen tour announcement: Singer to perform entire West End Girl album at London Palladium shows
The tour kicks off at Glasgow Royal Concert Hall on March 2 and concludes with two nights at The London Palladium on March 20 and 21
Local messages
Chancellor, please ditch this 'super tax' to make it a happy Christmas in the West End
Our festive forecast lays bare an economic reality that cannot be ignored
West End stores fear weakest Christmas sales growth since the pandemic
Sales in November and December are only expected to increase by 1.3%
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Daniel Radcliffe to star in Broadway premiere of Every Brilliant Thing
The one-person play will run from February 21 to May 24 in New York.
John Cleese pays tribute to Fawlty Towers’ Prunella Scales
The actress died at the age of 93, her family announced.
Attempted murder trial of man who stabbed girl in Leicester Square dropped
The Australian child was on holiday when she was attacked by a stranger in central London.
‘I spoke complete twaddle for four minutes’: Meera Syal, Larry Lamb and more on the terror of stage fright
Forget Halloween! Real scares can happen to actors any night of the year. Big name performers, including Zachary Hart and Harmony Rose-Bremner, recall their worst moments – and how they overcame their fearsDerek Jacobi had a bout of it during a world tour of Hamlet. Bill Nighy wrestled with it in ...
Prunella Scales obituary
Versatile stage and screen actor who found TV comedy fame as Sybil Fawlty and later played Elizabeth II on stageAlthough it became virtually a weekly occurrence to find Queen Elizabeth II treading the boards in recent years, the first time a reigning monarch was portrayed on the contemporary British...
Shocking moment American boss mugged for his watch in Mayfair
J. Riccardo Benavides targeted on Piccadilly as Standard reveals scale of crime plaguing London’s West End
What’s in a name? West End casting directors raise concerns about trend for big stars
Film and TV stars are selling tickets, but director says reliance on famous names is ‘killing audiences’ intellects’From Ncuti Gatwa in Born With Teeth to Alicia Vikander in The Lady From the Sea and Susan Sarandon in Mary Page Marlowe, there is no shortage of starry celebrities being cast for...
Secret Cinema company is bought by Hollywood power broker
Owner of London-based immersive film and TV business sold for undisclosed sum to Ari Emanuel’s MariExperiential entertainment is having a gold rush but commercial success is far from certainThe parent company behind Secret Cinema, the London-based immersive film and TV business, has been bought by...
Les Misérables: a musical full of heart and hope that continues to defy its critics
When it opened in 1985, Les Mis got some rotten reviews. Forty years on, our writer sees it afresh and Cameron Mackintosh reflects on the show’s spectacular successSo were we wrong? By “we” I mean the overnight critics, myself included, who gave largely negative reviews to the musical of Les M...
Soho's G-A-Y Bar to close this weekend in latest hammerblow for London's nightlife
G-A-Y Bar owner Jeremy Joseph said it was ‘time to say goodbye’ to the venue after 25 years
Illegal erectile dysfunction drugs and antidepressants sold in West End souvenir shops
Sachets and blister packs of imported sex drug Kamagra were seized by Westminster Council during visits to four shops
Salomé review – breathtakingly boring spin on Oscar Wilde’s baroque tragedy
Theatre Royal Haymarket, London Maxim Didenko delivers Wilde’s version of the biblical tale with a blingy design, topless men in hoods and yodellingIs it morally acceptable to host an Israeli theatre company in London’s West End in the midst of the war in Gaza? Reviving Oscar Wilde’s baroque o...
The Importance of Being Earnest review – Stephen Fry’s Lady Bracknell presides over merrily queered comedy
Noël Coward theatre, LondonMax Webster’s frisky Oscar Wilde revival, first seen at the National Theatre, arrives in the West End with a new castOscar Wilde’s comedy was, he said, “written by a butterfly, for butterflies”. Real life may threaten: the mercenary Victorian marriage market and c...
Clarkston review – Heartstopper’s Joe Locke joins lonely souls looking to make life matter
Trafalgar theatre, LondonCo-starring Ruaridh Mollica and Sophie Melville, this bleak three-hander by Samuel D Hunter leaves little unsaidDrugs, unemployment and a heavy air of purposelessness gnaw at the trio in Samuel D Hunter’s bleak 2015 play, which considers what it means to live, work and tra...
Unions urge UK theatres to limit at-seat alcohol sales as staff face ‘unacceptable abuse’
Rowdy audience members have disrupted performances with heckling, violence and even copulation in the stalls“Speak clearly and don’t bump into the furniture” – so goes Noël Coward’s timeless advice to actors. But for those treading the boards of London’s West End this weekend, there is ...
The Weir review – a riveting return for Conor McPherson’s lonesome barflies
Harold Pinter theatre, LondonAlmost 30 years on, the Irish playwright’s intimate drama brims with painful memories and comedy – brought to dazzling effect by a flawless castConor McPherson’s rural Irish bar-room drama seeps into your bones. Almost 30 years since its first production, I can sti...
Sheridan Smith to star in new production of Alan Ayckbourn play
Described as a ‘gripping exploration of identity, family, and mental escape’, Woman In Mind will be performed in London, Sunderland and Glasgow.