Aliya Al-Hassan

The BBC Proms returns in summer 2026, presenting eight weeks of world-class music from an array of leading orchestras, conductors and soloists from across the UK and around the world.

First seen at last year's Edinburgh fringe, Jules Coyle's semi-verbatim play, Managed Approach, now comes to Riverside Studios for a short, but important run. Between 2014 and 2020, a local government initiative in Holbeck, Leeds allowed sex workers to operate under certain regulations and was known as the Managed Approach. The play explores the experiences of both sex workers and residents whose lives are impacted by the scheme in a number of surprising and sometimes shocking ways.

On Avenue Q, puppets and people intermingle in this show about the trials and tribulations of life as a grown-up: love, sex, money, race, and how to tell your roommate he’s gay. After two decades, the three-time Tony Award-winning musical Avenue Q has returned to the West End in all its glory. With original Broadway director Jason Moore and original puppet designer Rick Lyon, a brand new cast takes on the puppet show with a difference.

The puppet show pumped full of profanity is back. Jason Moore's outrageous Avenue Q premiered in the West End two decades ago, bringing issues such as racism, the housing crisis and youth identity crisis to the stage in a unique and incredibly clever format. Oh yes, and there is explicit puppet sex too.

Jessica Parks is a maverick London Crown Court Judge; sharp, compassionate, and determined to change a system she knows isn’t always just. But her career exists inter alia (‘among other things’) as she balances motherhood, friendship and the elusive notion of ‘having it all’. So, when an unthinkable event rocks her finely tuned life, can she hold her family together – or will everything fall apart? Rosamund Pike returns to Suzie Miller's explosive second play-what did the critics think?

Pierre Choderlos de Laclos’s scandalous 1782 novel, Les Liaisons Dangereuses, has received several adaptations over the years. None more resonant than Christopher Hampton’s 1985 reinvention which is now revived and updated in a masterful manner by Marianne Elliot at the National Theatre.

Inspired by a true story and based on the Miramax motion picture written by Geoff Deane and Tim Firth, Kinky Boots features a warm and witty book by four-time Tony Award-winner Harvey Fierstein and a richly diverse musical score from Grammy Award-winning rock icon Cyndi Lauper, in her stunning theatrical debut. The production is directed and choreographed by Tony Award-winner Jerry Mitchell , with music supervision, arrangements and orchestrations by Stephen Oremus. Starring Strictly Come Dancing's Johannes Radebe as Lola and X-Factor star Matt Cardle as Charlie, this revival is directed by Leicester Curve's artistic director Nicolai Foster, What did the critics think?

Last seen in the West End in 2019, Cyndi Lauper and Matt Fierstein's uplifting musical Kinky Boots finally struts its way back to London after a national tour. Originating at the Curve Leicester and directed by its artistic director Nikolai Foster, it brings starry sparkle to the stage with the casting of Strictly's Johannes Radebe, but fails to capture the energy and vigour of its previous iteration.

Last seen in London at the National Theatre nearly 25 years ago, Nicholas Wright's thoughtful and thought-provoking play, Vincent In Brixton, now has a well-deserved revival at the Orange Tree in a beautifully performed, intimate and multi-layered production, showcasing some formidable acting talent, both old and new.

It’s a hot, beautiful summer in 1905, and Russia’s elite retreat to the countryside to swim, sip champagne and start affairs. When they’re having this much fun, why care about anything else? But Varvara just can’t shake the feeling that their holiday idyll is built on borrowed time. As the party continues, how long can they ignore the storm on the horizon?

Christy Lefteri’s 2019 bestseller The Beekeeper of Aleppo is both a powerful and poetic story about the refugee experience. Her story of Nuri and his wife Afra's escape from Syria to England was inspired by time Lefteri spent working in a refugee camp in Athens. Syria may currently be seen as less newsworthy than it was, but the issue of people displaced from their homes and seeking safety elsewhere has rarely been more discussed. So why does this important and emotional story feel flat on stage?

Check out our exclusive production photos of The Ballad of Johnny & June, starring Christopher Ryan Grant and Christina Bianco.

Thornton Wilder’s 1938 play, Our Town, marks the first production for Michael Sheen’s Welsh National Theatre. After selling out across Welsh venues, this understated gem of a play moves west to give audiences of the Rose Theatre a chance to see what this exciting new company can do.

Multi-award-winning Cynthia Erivo is having a pretty good year: still riding high on the success of the Wicked films and nominated for an MBE in the 2026 New Year Honours list, she is now going back to her stage roots in Kip Williams's adaptation of Bram Stoker's gothic masterpiece, Dracula. Anticipation about her appearance has been fevered, but the result is a lot of style, but not enough substance.

In his book, A Grief Observed, C.S. Lewis wrote, 'The pain I feel now is the happiness I had before. That's the deal'. It's that deal that William Nicholson's poignant play explores in the true story of Lewis's late-in-life love, marriage and loss. Thoughtful, tender and touching, Shadowlands examines joy and grief as a profoundly human experience.

Today we are wearily familiar with the terms 'Stop the Boats' and the narrative that all refugees are coming to Britain to take 'our' jobs, scam us for benefits and prey upon young girls. Nick Ahad's adaptation of Onjali Q. Raúf's beautiful book, The Boy at the Back of the Class, takes much of the political heat out of the issue with a hopeful and very human production for all ages.

Harold Fry was never meant to be a hero. An ordinary man in an ordinary life until a letter from a long-lost friend sends him out the front door… and he keeps on walking. From Devon’s quiet lanes to the windswept streets of Berwick-upon-Tweed, his journey becomes a pilgrimage of love, redemption, and second chances. Strangers turn into companions, kindness appears in unexpected places, and the road reveals more than Harold ever imagined. Back home, his wife Maureen begins her own journey, one that might bring them together again.

First seen in Chichester last summer, The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry now makes its joyful arrival into London. Based on the 2012 novel by Rachel Joyce which became a 2023 film, the show is a musical that cleverly acts as a snapshot of modern Britain and a study into the complexities and darkness of grief and sadness within a marriage. 

Hatred, desolation and disappointment run deep through August Strindberg's Dance of Death. Marriage is a prison from which the only escape is death. With Valentine's Day rapidly approaching, director Richard Eyre's adaptation may remind you that your other half isn't quite so bad after all.

Arcadia is set in April 1809 in a stately home in Derbyshire. Thomasina, a gifted pupil, proposes a startling theory, beyond her comprehension. All around her, the adults, including her tutor Septimus, are preoccupied with secret desires, illicit passions and professional rivalries. Two hundred years later, academic adversaries Hannah and Bernard are piecing together puzzling clues, curiously recalling those events of 1809, in their quest for an increasingly elusive truth.