New British musical *Two Strangers (Carry a Cake Across New York)* has extended performances by seven weeks at the Criterion Theatre in the West End. The show is now booking until 31 August.

Jim Barne and Kit Buchan's musical transferred to the West End earlier this month, following a sold-out, extended run at London's Kiln Theatre.

The production stars Olivier Award winner Sam Tutty (*Dear Evan Hansen*) as Dougal and Dujonna Gift (*Hamilton, Caroline or Change, Motown: The Musical*) as Robin....

'Two Strangers (Carry a Cake Across New York)' extends performances through August 2024

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Olivier Award winner Sam Tutty and Dujonna Gift star in this adorable two-hander by Jim Barne and Kit Buchan. Performances have been extended to 31 August.

Again! Step, kick, kick, leap, kick, touch… Again! God, I hope I get it… Originally devised, directed, and choreographed by Michael Bennett with a score by Marvin Hamlisch, the 1975 musical *A Chorus Line* returns to London this summer in a fresh production directed by Nikolai Foster and starring Adam Cooper and Carly Mercedes Dyer.

Cooper plays Zach, the domineering director-choreographer casting the chorus for a new Broadway musical who puts the hopefuls through the wringer – physically and...

Learn all about the history of 'A Chorus Line' in London and New York

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The iconic musical plays at Sadler's Wells this summer in an exciting new production starring Adam Cooper and Carly Mercedes Dyer.

A musical version of a chick flick? With spectacular fashion shows, epic backstabbing and a diva who’ll chill your soul, it could well be groundbreaking. *The Devil Wears Prada* struts into the West End this autumn. With an original score by Elton John and a cast led by Vanessa Williams and Matt Henry, start planning your outfit for the most stylish show in town! 

Based on the bestselling novel by Lauren Weisberger and the film starring Meryl Streep and Anne Hathaway, protagonist Andrea “Andy”...

Everything you need to know about 'The Devil Wears Prada' in the West End

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Elton John's musical version of the hit novel and film arrives at London's Dominion Theatre this autumn, starring Vanessa Williams and Matt Henry.


We’re spoiled for choice when it comes to shows in London, and it can be hard to keep up with everything that’s opening – we all have busy lives and it isn’t possible to fit everything in. Fortunately, second chances do sometimes arise!

A whole host of plays and musicals are being reprised in the West End this spring and summer, from celebrated musicals to classic drama and exciting contemporary writing. If it’s a show you’ve loved before, different cast members and venues can provide a whole...

Catch these incredible theatre shows as they return to the stage in London

From *Sister Act* and *Hadestown* to *Standing at the Sky's Edge*, there's a wealth of fantastic shows coming into town – so don't miss out!

Make a joyful noise! West End favourite [Lee Mead](https://www.londontheatre.co.uk/stars-on-stage/lee-mead) will join the cast of [*Sister Act*](https://www.londontheatre.co.uk/show/28926-sister-act) at the [Dominion Theatre](https://www.londontheatre.co.uk/theatres/dominion-theatre) this June.

Mead is best known for his West End performances in *Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat, Legally Blonde*, [*Wicked*](https://www.londontheatre.co.uk/show/313-wicked-tickets), and, most...

Lee Mead to join 'Sister Act' West End cast

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The London theatre veteran will join Ruth Jones, Alexandra Burke, and more in the musical based on the hit movie, which currently stars Beverley Knight.

The magic returns! [*My Neighbour Totoro*](https://www.londontheatre.co.uk/show/25389-my-neighbour-totoro-tickets), the stage adaptation of Hayao Miyazaki's beloved same-named Studio Ghibli movie, will transfer to the West End in 2025. The [Gillian Lynne Theatre](https://www.londontheatre.co.uk/theatres/gillian-lynne-theatre) will host the 34-week run from 8 March to 2 November 2025. Opening night is 20 March.

*My Neighbour Totoro* follows two sisters, Satsuki and Mei, who move to the...

'My Neighbour Totoro' sets West End transfer

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Following two seasons at the Barbican Centre, the acclaimed play adapted from the classic Studio Ghibli film will play a 34-week run at the Gillian Lynne Theatre.

All hail Macbeth! *Macbeth*, starring [David Tennant](https://www.londontheatre.co.uk/stars-on-stage/david-tennant) in the title role and Cush Jumbo as Lady Macbeth, will play in the West End this autumn, with performances running at the Harold Pinter Theatre from 1 October to 14 December.

The production comes to the West End from a critically acclaimed premiere at the Donmar Warehouse in fall 2023, with the entire original cast returning. Alongside Tennant (*Doctor Who*) and Jumbo (*The Good...

David Tennant and Cush Jumbo-led 'Macbeth' to transfer to the West End

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The critically acclaimed production played the Donmar Warehouse in 2023, also starring Tennant and Jumbo, and will now have a two-month run in the West End.

Truth is, no one can do what he does. Born Reginald Kenneth Dwight in 1947, Elton John has been one of the world’s most successful pop stars and songwriters since he released “Your Song” in 1970. 

Collaborating with lyricist Bernie Taupin, some of his greatest hits include “Tiny Dancer”, “Rocket Man”, “Goodbye Yellow Brick Road”, “I’m Still Standing”, “Are You Ready for Love”, and, of course, “Candle in the Wind”, which was revised as a tribute to Princess Diana following her death and became a...

Explore the fantastic stage musicals of Elton John ahead of 'The Devil Wears Prada'

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Follow our guide to the shows composed by legendary pop star Elton John, including *The Lion King, Billy Elliot, Tammy Faye*, and the forthcoming West End musical *The Devil Wears Prada*.  

Revivals of musicals are often every bit as revelatory as new takes on classic plays. In recent years, Daniel Fish’s *Oklahoma!* imbued the 1943 Rodgers and Hammerstein classic with a chillingly contemporary significance without changing a word, and Jamie Lloyd’s stripped back *Sunset Boulevard* recently swept the Olivier Awards.

This summer, *Starlight Express* makes a spectacular return in a specially designed auditorium. There’s star casting aplenty as Imelda Staunton leads *Hello, Dolly!*...

Experience London shows in a new light with tickets to West End musical revivals

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Relive all the joy of classic West End musicals as they return to London in 2024, including *Hello, Dolly!*, *Starlight Express*, and *Kiss Me, Kate*.

The [London Palladium](https://www.londontheatre.co.uk/theatres/london-palladium) will show a *Robin Hood* pantomime in December, continuing its annual tradition of presenting a panto each Christmas season. Performances will run from 7 December 2024 to 12 January 2025.

The star-studded cast includes [Julian Clary](https://www.londontheatre.co.uk/stars-on-stage/julian-clary) as Robin Hood, Jane McDonald as Maid Marion, Paul Zerdin as Will Scarlet, [Nigel...

Jane McDonald, Julian Clary to lead 'Robin Hood' panto in December

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Numerous award-winning West End actors will join the ninth annual panto at the historic venue, with performances running from December 2024 to January 2025.

The Academy Award-winning actress, Helen Hunt, will star in the London premiere of Jonathan Spector’s [*Eureka Day*](https://www.londontheatre.co.uk/show/25630-eureka-day). *Eureka Day* begins previews at the [Old Vic](https://www.londontheatre.co.uk/theatres/the-old-vic) on 6 September, ahead of an opening night on 23 September and performances to 31 October. 

Set in 2017 at the Eureka Day school in Berkeley, California, *Eureka Day* follows five board members as they update their school policies. At the same time, a mumps outbreak threatens the local community, and the board members struggle to agree and find truths.

Helen Hunt will play Suzanne in *Eureka Day*. She’s best known for award-winning performances in the sitcom, *Mad About You*, and as Carol Connelly in the 1997 film, *As Good As It Gets*. She previously worked with Old Vic artistic director, Matthew Warchus, on the Broadway play *Life x 3*.

Katy Rudd will direct Jonathan Spector’s *Eureka Day* at the Old Vic. Further casting and a creative team will be announced at a later date.

*Eureka Day* is at the Old Vic.

*Photo credit: Helen Hunt (Photo by John Russo)*


Helen Hunt to star in ‘Eureka Day’ 

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Ben Schnetzer, Susan Kelechi Watson, Mark McKinney, Helen Hunt and Kirsten Foster in Eureka Day at The Old Vic. Photo by Manuel Harlan

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Helen Hunt stars in the London premiere of *Eureka Day* at the Old Vic in autumn 2022. The timely vaccination satire focuses on a committee who can't decide on stringent rules in the midst of a public health scare. *Eureka Day* tickets are available on London Theatre now. 

The *Eureka Day* play follows the fictional events at Eureka Day school in Berkeley, California. The school’s pretty flexible on who is allowed to attend; welcoming every child is met with applause and high praise from parents in the local community. So much so, the school’s executive committee pride themselves on making future decisions for the entire school body. 

When issues arise though, it’s difficult for the executive committee members to agree. When the mumps begins to spread through the school, board members disagree on preserving a culture of inclusivity. With the committee split in half and plenty of heated debate, will the committee reach a consensus on making vaccinations mandatory? Or will their days of tolerance and togetherness be long gone?

While a play about vaccinations may be even more timely now, thanks to the Coronavirus pandemic, *Eureka Day* had audiences talking about jabs from 2018.  
In a Eureka Day review from Time Out, they said: “Spector and the expert cast extract comic gold from the little tugs-of-war for control among the members of the committee.” An all-star international cast are set to do the same in London Eureka Day performances: Helen Hunt from *Mad About You*, Susan Kelechi Watson from *This Is Us* and Mark McKinney from *Superstore*. 

*Eureka Day* tickets are available now. Book your *Eureka Day* tickets on London Theatre today.

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Every child is welcome at Eureka Day school, until the mumps plague the local area.
Helen Hunt stars in a vaccination satire that sees communities come together and be torn apart in an instant.
Book your appointment to see *Eureka Day* at the Old Vic today.

While *Eureka Day* may be a fictional story, it’s rooted in truth. The *Eureka Day* school is a free school, breaking away from formal schooling and placing a greater emphasis on families making decisions for their children. 

Jonathan Spector didn’t predict the future either. He wrote *Eureka Day* about an outbreak of mumps. However, the messages told in *Eureka Day* could apply to any medical outbreak. It’s interesting to see what triumphs though: ideas, or bliss.

Queue up for your theatre jab to the Old Vic, so book *Eureka Day* tickets today.

## What to Watch For:

- There’s an all-star cast appearing in *Eureka Day* London performances. See *Pride*’s Ben Schnetzer, *This Is Us*'s Susan Kelechi Watson, and *Superstore*’s Mark McKinney. You’ll want to watch these television stars on stage.
- *Eureka Day* was a New York Times Critics’ Pick in 2019. 
- The *Eureka Day* play is set in Berkeley, California. Playwright Jonathan Spector chose Berkeley as the setting due to the city’s commitment to live by their values. 

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How do you weigh duty to yourself and your loved ones versus duty to the whole community? It’s a theoretical conundrum which became extremely concrete for us all during the pandemic, but it was an ongoing issue in the United States long before that – as Jonathan Spector’s sharply comic and fascinatingly prescient 2018 play, *[Eureka Day](https://www.londontheatre.co.uk/show/25630-eureka-day-tickets)*, attests. And, although aspects here do feel very specifically American, there’s also plenty of resonance in this slick European premiere.

The setting is a privileged private elementary school, the titular Eureka Day, in liberal Berkeley, California. Carina, a new African-American parent at the institution, is our point of entry into its earnestly progressive board meeting: an “open room” where decisions are made by consensus, not vote, and everyone’s “unique perspective” is valued. 

In theory, anyway. In practice, Eli – a stay-at-home dad with a man-bun – constantly interrupts the women in the room, and the sanctimonious veterans tend to patronise Carina. But they speak the careful language of inclusion, using gender-neutral pronouns for the kids, explaining how a production of *Peter Pan* was too colonialist, and fretting over which ethnicities should be used in a dropdown registration form.

However, the delicious irony of Spector’s play is that when this group is faced with a real conundrum in which their individual decisions affect everyone, their performative respectfulness is exposed as a sham. That very modern crisis? A mumps outbreak, made worse by multiple parents refusing to get their children the MMR vaccine. The school is now in danger of closing after the health board orders that unvaccinated kids stay quarantined, and, naturally, its financial problems are exacerbated by a recent outsize spend on converting the bathrooms into all-gender.

There’s an oddly meta aspect to all of this: the Old Vic itself got into a row after promising more ladies’ loos during its refurbishment in 2019, then instead switching to gender-neutral ones. The theatre also made headlines when it decided to drop Terry Gilliam’s recent revival of *Into the Woods* because the director’s contentious comments apparently made some feel uncomfortable.

So, this is not just rich dramatic terrain, but bold programming from the Old Vic – and it’s amply rewarded. In this hugely engaging piece, Spector doesn’t set out to lecture, or to condemn. Although most of this particular audience likely supports vaccination, its benefits proven by scientific evidence, he gives sympathetic time to the doubters too. In fact, an emotional revelation in the second half almost tips the scales too far in favour of anti-vaxxers.

But above all, *Eureka Day* is incredibly funny. The first act closes with a disastrous virtual town hall meeting, in which the board’s woolly reassurances are completely drowned out by a sea of comments, projected onto the back wall. It’s the perfect encapsulation of how things spiral out of control online: the petty corrections, false claims, tangents, emojis, all-caps anger, shared links to conspiracy theory sites, and, of course, the inevitable reference to Nazis. It’s easily the most I’ve laughed in a theatre this year.

The dramatic side isn’t quite as effective – Spector develops the arguments more fully than the necessarily schematic characters – but a superb cast fills in the gaps. Oscar-winning Hollywood star [Helen Hunt](https://www.londontheatre.co.uk/theatre-news/news/helen-hunt-in-movies-tv-shows-and-stage-performances) is the big name here, yet proves a generous company member. She effectively underplays her big monologue in the second half, and builds up a complex picture of a well-meaning, intelligent but fundamentally traumatised parent. 

American actor [Mark McKinney](https://www.londontheatre.co.uk/theatre-news/interviews/eureka-day-star-mark-mckinney-london-debut-and-enjoying-theatre), also making his London theatre debut, is hilarious as the socks-and-sandals-wearing, folksy-wisdom-spouting, anxiously peace-making hippie Don. Ben Schnetzer is perfectly insufferable as the OTT woke ally Eli, who later unravels when he has to deal with a shattering tragedy, and Kirsten Foster likewise shines when her May is forced from complacent passivity to hysteria in the face of grim consequences. 

But Susan Kelechi Watson, excellent as the watchful Carina, probably has the most interesting arc, growing in power, confidence and pragmatic ruthlessness as the occasion demands – and exposing systemetic prejudice along the way.

Katy Rudd’s crisp production is beautiful paced, and Rob Howell’s design has a neat double meaning. At first you take pleasure in its colourful stick-figure children all holding hands; later, it looks horribly like the swift transfer of infection in an unvaccinated community. And of course, all of this hits home post-Covid; terms like “herd immunity” are particularly charged. 

But Spector’s play gets to the root of a deeper issue: our increasingly polarised world, in which arguments are based on feeling, not fact, and we become ever-more entrenched in our culture-wars tribes. The kind of utopian consensus proposed by the Eureka Day board now feels like a pipe dream. At least we can all agree that the Old Vic is supplying a brilliantly funny and cleverly thought-provoking response.

*Eureka Day is at the Old Vic to 31 October. Book Eureka Day tickets on London Theatre.*

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*Photo credit: The cast of Eureka Day (Photo by Manuel Harlan)*

'Eureka Day' review – an incredibly funny satire of a modern conundrum

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A Christmas Carol | Old Vic - LON [24716] 

A Christmas Carol | Old Vic

A Christmas Carol fills the auditorium to the brim with mince pies, music and merriment. A unique staging immerses the audience in London’s longest running adaptation of this beloved festive favourite.

The Old Vic, originally named the Royal Coburg Theatre, was designed in 1818 by Rudolph Cabanel. Its name was later changed to the Royal Victoria Theatre, then the Royal Victoria Hall, before it took on its nickname of 'The Old Vic' as its official name in 1925. 

The Old Vic has housed acclaimed performances with such celebrated actors as John Gielgud’s *Hamlet*, Laurence Olivier’s *Macbeth* and *Othello* in 1937, and Judi Dench’s Juliet in *Romeo and Juliet*, which was privately performed for The Queen in 1957.

In 1963, the Old Vic became the home base of the [National Theatre](https://www.londontheatre.co.uk/theatres/national-theatre) of Great Britain during its formation under Laurence Olivier. The theatre continued to host the National Theatre until the move to South Bank in 1976. 

There are two entrances to the Old Vic: one on The Cut and the other on Waterloo Road, which is an accessible entrance. In 2019, 'Penny', an accessible basement cafe and bar was opened, offering drinks, sandwiches and snacks. 

## Old Vic Seating Information

The auditorium has three levels - Stalls, Dress Circle, and the Lilian Baylis Circle.

Despite the Dress Circle overhang, this doesn’t affect the view due to pillars. There is also a staggered rake that will be noticeable from row J to allow better viewing.

The Lilian Baylis Circle is high above the ground and overhangs the Dress Circle at row C meaning row E will miss the top of the stage. There are also standing seats available at the sides of this circle.

Helen Hunt to star in ‘Eureka Day’

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