By Neil Durham
WORTH A LOOK?: ****
WHEN? Saturday 15 August and runs through 19 September 2026 RUNTIME: 120 minutes (including a 20-minute interval)
Growing up in the 70s with the sounds of Demis Roussos and taste of cheesy pineapple skewers, even the aspiration was palpable.
You, dear reader, are given the chance to vote in 17 categories from October this year to tell us your favourite theatre, music, TV, film and podcast of 2026.
We last saw Anderson resplendent on a revolving London stage at the Young Vic in A Streetcar Named Desire and here she stars in the classic Who’s Afraid Of Virginia Woolf? opposite Billy Crudup (High Noon, Harold Pinter Theatre) at the intimate @SohoPlace. Directed by Marianne Elliott (Les Liaisons Dangereuses, National Theatre) runs 21 September through 19 December 2026. Tickets
WORTH A LOOK?: ****
Madonna’s latest album Confessions II stakes a claim to be the best LP of the year so far and this is a remix of 1 of its many singles with a guest duet vocal with another of the world’s biggest gay icons.
WORTH A LOOK?: *****
Runtime: 173 minutes
By Neil Durham
2 years after Oppenheimer and Christopher Nolan’s follow-up is a spectacular rethinking of Homer’s ancient Greek epic poem with its protagonist reflecting more than ever before on the worth of his heroism.
By Neil Durham
WORTH A LOOK?: ***
WHEN? Saturday 1 August, opens 11 August and runs through 12 September 2026.
It feels like musical theatre has never been more popular and yet we can’t help but also think that not everything’s ripe to see its characters burst into song.
By Neil Durham
WORTH A LOOK?: ****1/2
WHEN? Sunday 2 August (matinee), opens 4 August and runs through 27 September 2026 RUNTIME: 160 minutes (including a 20-minute interval)
X Factor winner Burke (Chicago, Phoenix Theatre) is Chaka Khan and encores with a mash-up of her biggest hits – I Feel For You, Ain’t Nobody and I’m Every Woman – and it’s a joyous end to the story of a complicated woman born ahead of her time in the surprise hit show of the summer.
By Neil Durham
WORTH A LOOK?: ****
WHEN? Saturday 1 August (matinee), opens 6 August and runs through 12 September 2026 RUNTIME: 135 minutes (including a 20-minute interval)
It’s the extraordinarily moving song Memory – sample lyric: ‘I remember the time I knew what happiness was, let the Memory live again’ – which elevates this Andrew Lloyd Webber musical based on T.S. Eliot’s poems in Old Possum’s Book Of Practical Cats.
WORTH A LOOK?: ****1/2
Tracklist: Hey Saint Jude; Intruder; Oh No You Don’t; Lost Time; Jump In; Giddy In A Good Way; Cut Me Dead; Cast A Stone; Pretenders; Paper Planes; Leaving The Scene; Pollyanna Says
Same Sun/Same Sky is the 1st new album for 34 years by The Darling Buds and it draws on the best of the many styles of the band’s 1st trio of LPs to underline why they were so underrated.
By Neil Durham
WORTH A LOOK?: ****
WHEN?: Wednesday 29 July, opens 11 August and runs through 19 September 2026 RUNTIME: 180 minutes (with a 20-minute interval but aiming for 150 minutes)
Olivier Award-winner Roger Allam (A Number, Bridge Theatre) is the hilarious best reason to see this farce as bumbling businessman Frank Foster who fails to realise his wife is cheating on him.
