Lead casting has been announced for new musical *Hercules*, which opens in the West End next summer. Performances will begin at Theatre Royal Drury Lane on 6 June, 2025.

Luke Brady will play the title role in the musical next year. His stage credits include *As You Like It* (RSC), *SuperYou* (Lyric Theatre), *Assassins* (Chichester Theatre), *The Prince of Egypt* (Dominion Theatre), *Twelfth Night, The Merchant of Venice,* and *The Taming of the Shrew* (Shakespeare’s Globe), while on screen he...

'Hercules' reveals lead casting in the West End

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*Hercules* has music by Alan Menken and lyrics by David Zippel, and a new book by Robert Horn and Young Vic outgoing artistic director Kwame Kwei-Armah.

There’s no better way to escape those dark winter nights than with a trip to the theatre. Happily, November is serving up plenty of exciting London shows to keep any winter blues at bay, with some major openings in the West End and beyond. 

Those who can't wait for *The Greatest Showman* musical to arrive in London can whet their appetities with [*Come Alive!*](https://www.londontheatre.co.uk/show/37379-come-alive), a spectacular circus show based on the music of the hit 2017 film, with an...

Top theatre to see in London in November

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West End

Find out the best shows to see in London in November 2024, from *Barcelona* with Lily Collins and Álvaro Morte, to *Dr. Strangelove* with Steve Coogan.

Additional shows have been announced in the Bush Theatre's line-up for 2025, including a new play starring Olivier Award nominee and *It's a Sin* actor Omari Douglas.

He has been cast in Coral Wylie's new play *Lavender, Hyacinth, Violet, Yew*, which follows 19-year-old Pip as they dig into their family's past, unearthing old secrets. Directed by Debbie Hannan (Overflow), the cast also includes Wil Johnson, Pooky Quesnel, and writer Wylie. The show will run from 8 February to 22 March.

Making...

Bush Theatre announces new shows in 2025 season

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Work by Coral Wylie, babirye bukilwa, and Mohamed-Zain Dada will continue the Bush Theatre's programming in 2025, with Olivier Award nominee Omari Douglas returning to the stage.

New play *The Last Laugh* will run at the Noël Coward Theatre in the West End from 25 February to 22 March next year, ahead of a season in New York and a UK tour. 

Written and directed by Paul Hendy, the show re-imagines the lives of three of Britain's greatest comedy heroes: Tommy Cooper, Eric Morecambe, and Bob Monkhouse. *The Last Laugh* played at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe this summer. 

Bob Golding, Damian Williams, and Simon Cartwright will all reprise their roles as Eric Morecambe,...

'The Last Laugh' to transfer to the West End

1200 LT THE LAST LAUGH. Bob Golding (Eric Morecambe), Damian Williams (Tommy Cooper) and Simon Cartwright (Bob Monkhouse). Photo Pamela Raith (1)

Written and directed by Paul Hendy, the show re-imagines the lives of three of Britain's greatest comedy heroes: Tommy Cooper, Eric Morecambe, and Bob Monkhouse.

Something wicked this way comes… and London is packed with spook-tacular shows and activities that are perfect for Halloween 2024. The annual fright night falls on 31 October, which is a Thursday this year, and if you just love everything about this spine-tingling holiday, then you’ll want to start thinking about your plans now.

One ghoulishly great way to celebrate Halloween is with a play or musical – perhaps one that centres on witches, like...

Top shows and attractions in London for Halloween

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Trick or treat! Discover a wide variety of fun activities and events to book for Halloween in London, ranging from spine-chilling shows to eerie attractions.

It’s Halloween, duh! [*Mean Girls*](https://www.londontheatre.co.uk/show/35503-mean-girls) has announced it will be extending performances at the Savoy Theatre in the West End until 8 June, 2025. 

Tina Fey's hit musical, which is based on the 2004 film of the same name, follows student Cady Heron as she attempts to fit into North Shore High after being home schooled in Africa. But when she gets involved with popular girl group The Plastics, she learns that there are few things more dangerous...

'Mean Girls' tickets now available through June 2025

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Tina Fey's hit musical, which is based on the 2004 film of the same name, follows student Cady Heron as she attempts to fit into North Shore High after being home schooled in Africa.

Look, it’s Glinda! And Elphaba! You can’t have one without the other. Stephen Schwartz’s musical phenomenon *Wicked* is an evergreen (sorry) spectacle, which follows Elphaba and Glinda as they go from enemies to friends, eventually becoming the Wicked Witch of the West and Glinda the Good Witch.

The musical has been a vehicle for dozens of talented women playing the lead roles, including Idina Menzel and Kristin Chenoweth, who originated the roles on Broadway. Now this much-loved tale is being...

Two best friends: Elphaba and Glinda power pairings in 'Wicked'

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To celebrate Wicked Day, we look back on some of the incredible musical's most notable Elphaba and Glinda pairings, from Rachel Tucker and Louise Dearman to current duo Alexia Khadime and Lucy St. Louis.

I dreamed a dream! West End star Lucie Jones (*Wicked, Waitress, Pippin, Ghost, The Baker’s Wife*) will return to the London production of [*Les Misérables*](https://www.londontheatre.co.uk/show/300-les-miserables-tickets) for eight weeks this December. She will play Fantine from 23 December to 15 February 2025.

Katie Hall, who is currently playing Fantine in the West End, will perform the role in the World Tour of *Les Misérables The Arena Spectacular* from 26 December, in Manchester,...

Lucie Jones to return to 'Les Misérables' in the West End for eight weeks 

1200 LT Lucie Jones as -Fantine-. Photo by Johan Perrson

This October, *Les Misérables* entered its 40th year in London and is celebrating with its first world tour: *Les Misérables The Arena Spectacular*.

[*Moulin Rouge! The Musical*](https://www.londontheatre.co.uk/show/23350-moulin-rouge-the-musical-tickets) has announced that performances will extend through 24 May 2025 at the Piccadilly Theatre in the West End. 

Based on Baz Luhrmann’s 2001 Oscar-winning film starring Nicole Kidman and Ewan McGregor, and featuring the music of artists such as Elton John, The Beatles, and Elvis, *Moulin Rouge! The Musical* is a story of love and loss, beauty, and unparalleled extravagance. It follows lovesick...

'Moulin Rouge! The Musical' tickets now available through May 2025

1200 LT Moulin Rouge! The Musical. Natalie Kassanga as Satine

Based on Baz Luhrmann’s 2001 Oscar-winning film starring Nicole Kidman and Ewan McGregor, *Moulin Rouge! The Musical* is a story of love and loss, beauty, and unparalleled extravagance.

Almeida Theatre production *The Years* will transfer to London's West End next year. The play will run at the Harold Pinter Theatre from 24 January to 19 April.

Internationaal Theater Amsterdam’s artistic director Eline Arbo returns to direct her adaptation of Annie Ernaux’s semi-autobiographical novel, which follows the life of one woman born during the second world war, living through different eras and juggling marriage, motherhood, and more.

Deborah Findlay, Romola Garai, Gina McKee, Anjli...

Almeida Theatre's 'The Years' to transfer to the West End

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Romola Garai, Harmony Rose-Bremner, Gina McKee, Deborah Findlay, and Anjli Mohindra will reprise their performances from the Almeida run. 

Head into the woods with the [*A Midsummer Night’s Dream*](https://www.londontheatre.co.uk/show/27564-a-midsummer-nights-dream-globe) cast this summer. *A Midsummer Night’s Dream* is at [Shakespeare’s Globe](https://www.londontheatre.co.uk/theatres/shakespeares-globe) from 27 April to 12 August.

Elle While directs the popular Shakespeare comedy that follows young lovers, actors, and fairy kings and queens in an enchanted forest. It’s the first play in the 2023 season, with *The Comedy of Errors*, *Macbeth*, and *As You Like It* also in the season.

Shakespeare Globe’s artistic director Michelle Terry plays Puck, alongside Sam Crerar as Lysander, Mariah Gale as Bottom, Vinnie Heaven as Demetrius, Francesca Mills as Hermia, Anne Odeke as Hippolyta, Marianne Oldham as Titania, Rebecca Root as Quince, Isobel Thom as Helena, Sarah Finigan as Egeus and Snug, Jack Laskey as Oberon and Theseus, Molly Logan as Flute and Fairy, and Tanika Yearwood as Snout and Mustardseed.

James Maloney composes original music, with costume supervision by Sabia Smith, and movement by Annie-Lunnette Deakin-Foster.

Book *A Midsummer Night’s Dream* tickets on London Theatre.

[![Book Tickets CTA - LT/NYTG](//images.ctfassets.net/6pezt69ih962/3qAtGOdQq9x3k1WcHlaJnw/90ece91bbe47ed07e142c2e43c7a7a3f/BookTickets-250.png)](https://ticket.londontheatre.co.uk/booking/calendar?product_id=27564&content_product_id=27564&venue_id=198)

*Photo credit: A Midsummer Night’s Dream (Photo courtesy of Shakespeare’s Globe)*

‘A Midsummer Night’s Dream’ announces full cast at Shakespeare’s Globe

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Genre: Play

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Join a band of excited revellers and be welcomed into Shakespeare’s famous green forest. *A Midsummer Night’s Dream* tickets are available on London Theatre now.

It’s Midsummer’s Eve. It’s a time to celebrate the summer solstice and all the joyful moments that the warmer months bring. In this riotous play, young lovers, artisan players, and a Fairy King and Queen find themselves pitted against one another. When a shapeshifting servant begins to cast spells on everyone, all hell breaks loose — Mother Nature can’t work her magic here. Can anyone make their way out of the forest? Is life just but a dream?

Elle While directs a hilarious version of *A Midsummer Night’s Dream* at the Globe. She previously helmed a 1930s take on The Merry Wives of Windsor in the wooden ‘O’. Expect new, refreshing takes on Shakespeare’s classic comedy.

*A Midsummer Night’s Dream* in London starts a Shakespeare comedy season at the Globe: *The Comedy of Errors* and *As You Like It* will also be performed in 2023.

### Who are the characters in *A Midsummer Night’s Dream*?

Join Titania, the fairy queen who falls in love with Bottom, after being tricked by her husband Oberon, who likes to make fun of the mortals in the green forest. Then there's Puck, a mischievous fairy who'll do anything regardless of his responsibilities, and Bottom, a weaver who is caught up in Puck's pranks. Plus Hermia and Lysander want to elope, and Demetrius looks for Helena’s hand in marriage. There's lots going on in the woods.

Tickets to *A Midsummer Night’s Dream* are available now. Book your *A Midsummer Night’s Dream* tickets on London Theatre today.

A Midsummer Night's Dream (Globe 2023) -  LON - London Theatre

Join the revellers as mother nature envelops the Globe Theatre for Shakespeare’s deliciously disruptive and intoxicating comedy A Midsummer Night’s Dream. See *A Midsummer Night's Dream* in London with tickets on London Theatre today.

A Midsummer Night's Dream Globe 2023 - LON - Box Office

Buy tickets for A Midsummer Night's Dream at the Shakespeare's Globe in London. Find official theatre tickets to Plays with Box Office.

A Midsummer Night's Dream - Globe Tickets | Box Office

“Reason and love keep little company,” we’re reliably informed some way into [*A Midsummer Night’s Dream*](https://www.londontheatre.co.uk/show/27564-a-midsummer-nights-dream-globe), the Shakespeare play that perhaps more than any other invites reinvention. 

And why not, given the degree to which the irrational is embedded in this title’s very fabric. This, after all, is a play in which Puck claims to be able to put “a girdle around the earth in 40 minutes” and where the fairy queen, Titania, can fall for the donkey she assumes the weaver, Nick Bottom, to be.

So it’s no surprise that Elle While’s busy, bustling production – its opening delayed by illness – finds its own way into Shakespeare’s most otherworldly comedy, complete with the most extravagant costuming, courtesy the international designer takis, who is working at full tilt here. (Theseus’s splendiferous raiments are themselves worthy of permanent display.)

You quickly come to expect the unexpected, from a prologue that takes revelry to newly enthusiastic heights and on to our first glimpse of Michelle Terry’s extraordinary-looking Puck, who could well have stepped out of the visual world of Arthur Rackham or the Jim Henson Creature Shop.

Only at the very end does this performer, herself the Globe’s artistic director, remove the enveloping headgear that allows us to see her actual face. Advancing towards the audience, hands in her pockets, she’s a disarmingly casual presence. Can this be the same figure who, not much earlier, was seen silencing the musicians visible above the action or inducing shrieks at the breadth of her cunning.

Terry is always a pleasure to encounter at this, or any, address, her command of the language so complete that she finds a playfulness where others might not. “I go, I go, look how I go,” she says, vampily drawing a laugh on this simplest-seeming of lines. Elsewhere, her Puck is a strange, supernatural creature who looks of a piece with the tendrils that seem visibly to be crawling up the side of the Globe’s sturdy oak pillars. (The design is by Paul Williams, who goes by the solo moniker Wills.)

The show has been cast as inclusively as I’ve yet come across at a theatre boldly at the forefront on such matters. Nick Bottom is here Nicola Bottome (accent very much on the second syllable), a gender flip allowing the lovely Mariah Gale to relish the  pronunciation of her own name in a linguistic climate in which words like “prologue” and “epilogue” get a ludicrous comic spin. (Gale deliberately hiccups her way through much of the part, aptly enough when you’re wanting to convey a donkey.)

Hermia, in turn, is that perpetual live wire Francesca Mills, whose achondroplasia, or short-limbed dwarfism, lends a real sting to the character’s self-questioning amidst the gathering mania of the lovers that she is “so dwarfish and so low.” (The same performer was crucially invigorating in the Francesca Martinez play *All of Us* last year at the National.)

At times, you wish the production’s component parts cohered rather more fully: Missing is the unifying point of view that made something both dark and dazzling of Nicholas Hytner’s pre-pandemic *Midsummer Night’s Dream* for the Bridge Theatre, still the defining version of this play in recent years.

Mills’s energy notwithstanding, the lovers don’t really land; the stakes between them feel notably low even with the Helena of Isobel Thom, the nonbinary performer who led last season’s Globe company of the new play *I, Joan*. (Lysander and Demetrius are correspondingly pallid.) And though the Mechanicals’ play within-a-play is endearingly stage managed by Rebecca Root’s Peter Quince, that scene devolves into a competitive mugging that a tighter handle on the whole might put right.

Unusually, the characteristic doubling of Oberon and Theseus – adroitly managed by the ever-charismatic Jack Laskey, a Globe mainstay – isn’t given in this instance to Titania and Hippolyta, as well. That latter role is played by Anne Odeke without the suggestion of feminine subjugation that has attended views on this warrior-queen of late (and was very evident in the Hytner version). Titania, meanwhile, is in the radiant hands of Marianne Oldham, whose immediate stage authority brings to mind a younger Harriet Walter, which is no bad thing.

The vibe suggests a rave that could perhaps turn at any minute and that gives particular pride of place to the brass-intensive band who knock James Maloney’s score out of the park – or, in this case, yard. Actual engagement with the yard is here less than is the norm, though Theseus does recline toward the lip of the stage to deliver his “airy nothing” remarks around the same time that Hippolyta attempts a backward roll with which those standing near the front could perhaps assist.

And the climactic dance – another Globe mainstay – carries a particular frenzy. Make merry, it seems to be suggesting, and feast on what mirth you can before the madness of the world, like the broom-wielding Puck, sweeps it all away.

[*A Midsummer Night's Dream* is at Shakespeare's Globe Theatre through 12 August. Book *A Midsummer Night's Dream* tickets on London Theatre.](https://www.londontheatre.co.uk/show/27564-a-midsummer-nights-dream-globe)

*Photo credit: The company of A Midsummer Night's Dream at Shakespeare's Globe. (Photo by Helen Murray)*

'A Midsummer Night's Dream' review — lively production is extravagant but busy

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Read our three-star review of *A Midsummer Night's Dream*, directed by Elle While, now in performances at Shakespeare's Globe Theatre through 12 August.

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Immerse yourself in the enchanting world of Hansel and Gretel, as a new version of The Brothers Grimm’s fairy tale by Poet Laureate Simon Armitage transforms the Globe Theatre with poetry, songs and hope. Returning with a new recipe of music, mayhem and festive magic, this is a delicious treat for everyone aged 5+ directed by Nick Bagnall.

The Globe Theatre, located in London, is an iconic piece of British heritage steeped in rich artistic history. It is a modern reconstruction of the original Elizabethan playhouse, where some of William Shakespeare's most celebrated plays were first performed. Featuring an open-air setting, similar to how it would have been in the 16th century, it truly transports spectators back in time. Visitors can immerse themselves in renowned Shakespearean works or participate in educational and cultural programs curated by the team at The Globe. Regardless of your knowledge or interest in Shakespeare, the theatre promises an intrigue-filled experience. The Globe Theatre's circular architectural design provides a unique theatrical experience, with unobstructed views from every angle. 

## How to Get to the Venue

Located at 21 New Globe Walk, London, SE1 9DT, England, reaching the Globe Theatre is simple. The venue is accessible via public transportation with London Bridge (Northern and Jubilee lines) and Southwark (Jubilee Line) being the nearest Tube stations. If you prefer to arrive by bus, the routes 45, 63, 100 to Blackfriars Bridge; 15, 17 to Cannon Street; and 11, 15, 17, 23, 26, 76 to Mansion House station drop off near the theatre. For those driving, there are parking facilities nearby at Park Street.

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Shakespeare's Globe Theatre opened in 1997. The Globe is a reconstruction of an open-air theatre designed in 1599. 

The 'wooden O' honours the 16th-century theatre: audience members can purchase a standing ticket and be a "groundling." [Find out more about Shakespeare's Globe in London.](https://www.londontheatre.co.uk/theatre-news/news/visit-shakespeare-globe)

Shakespeare's Globe is also home to a second indoor theatre, the [Sam Wanamaker Playhouse](https://www.londontheatre.co.uk/theatres/sam-wanamaker-playhouse). It is named after the organisation's founder, American actor and director Sam Wanamaker, father of [Zoe Wanamaker](https://www.londontheatre.co.uk/stars-on-stage/zoe-wanamaker). 


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Shakespeare's Globe Theatre, opened in 1997, is a reconstruction of a 1599 open-air theatre. It also includes the Sam Wanamaker Playhouse.

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The Globe Theatre is an iconic London venue featuring historical, open-air performances. Accessible by public transportation, located at 21 New Globe Walk.

The whimsical Shakespeare comedy is the first production in this summer's season at the wooden 'O', with artistic director Michelle Terry playing Puck. 


‘A Midsummer Night’s Dream’ announces full cast at Shakespeare’s Globe

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