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.
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.
By Neil Durham
WORTH A LOOK?: ***
WHEN? Friday 24 July, opens 29 July and runs through 29 August 2026 RUNTIME: 100 minutes (no interval)
Our performance is stopped almost midway through for what was described as ‘a 1st aid front of house incident’ and we imagine it was in response to the spurting blood as a character’s tongue is cut off.
By Neil Durham
WORTH A LOOK?: ****
WHEN? Monday 20 July and runs through 19 September 2026 RUNTIME: 215 minutes (including 2 15-minute intervals)
Can a play ever be too long?
By Neil Durham
WORTH A LOOK?: ****
WHEN? Saturday 18 July, and runs through 5 September 2026. Transfers to Theatre Royal Drury Lane 16 October through 9 January 2027. Tickets Also UK tour 11 February 2027 through 23 October 2027 RUNTIME: 125 minutes (including a 20-minute interval)
The summer success of last year’s Olivier Award-winning EVITA! perhaps made this resurrection of a recent Regent’s Park Open Air Theatre production of an Andrew Lloyd Webber classic an obvious choice as follow up.
By Aline Mahrud
WORTH A LOOK?: ***
WHEN? Thursday 16 July and runs through 15 August 2026 RUNTIME: 75 minutes (without interval)
Galvin (pictured above left) makes his London theatre debut while his husband Ben Platt is about to open across town in new musical Midnight At The Never Get at the Menier Chocolate Factory.
By Neil Durham
WORTH A LOOK?: Awards potential
WHEN? Monday 13 July, opens 20 July and runs through 12 September 2026 RUNTIME: 100 minutes (no interval)
As this musical reaches its conclusion we can hear sniffing, stifled sobbing and crying around our front row seat showing the work’s immediate emotional impact.
By Neil Durham
WORTH A LOOK?: ****
WHEN? Sunday 21 June, opens 24 June and runs through 22 August 2026 RUNTIME: 90 minutes (no interval)
We really weren’t expecting to love this new musical as much as we did and we wonder whether it is its creators’ fondness for the awkward British humour of Ricky Gervais, Stephen Merchant and the Pythons that won us over.
