by Marianka Swain

The biggest party of 2025 came courtesy of Jamie Lloyd’s utterly riotous Shakespeare production in the summer, led by two simply Marvel-ous stars. Tom Hiddleston and Hayley Atwell returned to the stage to play enemies-to-lovers Benedick and Beatrice, who bicker and banter until they fall head over heels – exhibiting a remarkable sense of wonder as they do. Add in ’90s bangers belted out by Mason Alexander Park, extremely game dad-dancing disco from Hiddleston, a giant inflatable heart, and a blizzard of pink confetti, and this giddy romcom was joy incarnate.

by Marianka Swain

Jordan Fein cast an enthralling spell on the Bridge with his phenomenal revival of Stephen Sondheim and James Lapine’s fairy tale mash-up musical. Tom Scutt’s set and costumes and Aideen Malone’s lighting design, both among the year’s best examples of creative work, together created an astonishing landscape for this richly psychological journey into the woods, and a crack cast took full advantage. Among them, Kate Fleetwood bringing razor-sharp disdain and extraordinary pathos to the Witch, and feckless princes Oliver Savile and Rhys Whitfield having the most fun it’s possible to have on a stage.

Book Into the Woods tickets on LondonTheatre.co.uk

by Julia Rank

For his first show as artistic director of Regent’s Park Open Air Theatre, director/choreographer Drew McOnie showed that the little-seen Brigadoon really is one of the great Golden Age musicals. Lerner and Loewe’s score has to be one of the most enchanting ever written; McOnie’s balletic choreography was filled with joy, and Rona Munro’s revised book, in which the American visitors to the quaint Scottish town became fighter pilots instead of tourists, really heightened the central theme of seizing the day. The heather was in full bloom at Regent’s Park and hopefully it won’t be another 35 years before Brigadoon emerges from the mist again in London.

by Julia Rank

Why should anyone care about mid-century pianist, wit, and oddball Oscar Levant in 2025? Well, because Doug Wright’s play was such a compelling, tightly-wound piece of theatre. The show is based on a true incident in which Levant, who likely suffered from bipolar disorder, left a psychiatric unit for a few hours in order to honour a television engagement. Sean Hayes reprised his Tony-winning role as Levant, which culminated in an unforgettable performance of Gershwin’s “Rhapsody in Blue”. Rosalie Craig was also excellent as his wife June and, whenever she next returns to the stage, it ought to be as a bona fide TV star following her magnetic performance in Sally Wainwright’s Riot Women.

by Aliya Al-Hassan

Suzie Miller's fantastic new play at the National Theatre was one of my top shows of 2025 and will return in 2026, transferring to the Wyndham's Theatre. Miller again tackles the subjects of sexual abuse, rape convictions and the law. However, the angle is now fixed on parental responsibility, lives lived online and how teenage boys are brought up in today's challenging world. It’s a hard-hitting study of what happens when one woman's home and professional lives clash in the most devastating manner and Rosamund Pike's utterly convincing performance will surely be an awards certainty.

Book Inter Alia tickets on LondonTheatre.co.uk

by Aliya Al-Hassan

After stunning audiences at Chichester, Matthew Bourne’s Oliver! bounded into the West End at the start of the year and has gripped theatregoers ever since. Bourne both directs and choreographs a brilliant company, including a stunningly nuanced take on Fagin by Simon Lipkin. The show doesn’t shy away from the dark heart of child exploitation and violence in Dickens’s story, but also manages to have moments of real charm and levity. Lez Brotherston’s clever revolving set allows effortless and impressive scene changes, with atmospheric lighting throughout. A truly fresh, yet faithful take on the classic. Consider the show a hit.

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by Theo Bosanquet

After premiering last December at the Menier Chocolate Factory, Patrick Marber’s riotously funny revival of Mel Brooks’s comedy musical transferred in triumph to the West End in September. The cast is brilliantly led by Andy Nyman and Marc Antolin as the scheming impresarios determined to stage a flop, and includes a show-stealing performance from Trevor Ashley as the camp-as-Christmas director Roger DeBris, whose entrance during “Springtime for Hitler” on a man-pulled chariot, while dressed as the Fuhrer, provided arguably the single funniest moment of the theatrical year. Plus, in an age of rising far right activism, it’s a perfectly timed piece of seriously savage satire.

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by Theo Bosanquet

This part Welsh-language production of the Bard’s great romance only ran at Shakespeare’s Globe, in the candlelit Sam Wanamaker Playhouse, for four days, but made a significant impact nevertheless. Created by Theatr Cymru, it marked the first time the Welsh language has been used so extensively at this address, and emphatically proved the bilingual approach (audiences could follow a translation via a specially created app) can work wonders. Cymru artistic director Steffan Donnelly’s lucid production was superbly performed too, by a young cast including Steffan Cennydd and Isabella Colby Browne as the titular lovers. Mwy os gwelwch yn dda (more please).

by Matt Wolf

Some productions wow you, others go further and burrow under the skin. That last sensation defined Jamie Lloyd’s overwhelming London Palladium revival of Evita, which reinvented the Andrew Lloyd Webber-Tim Rice musical by folding a cautionary political parable into a thrillingly alive, visceral experience, the tireless ensemble whipped into a frenzy and beyond by the astonishing choreography of Fabian Aloise. Headlines rightly focused on the bravura Rachel Zegler delivering “Don’t Cry For Me Argentina” live from the theatre balcony to onlookers on the street below, but Zegler was matched beat for beat by another brilliant visiting American performer, Diego Andres Rodriguez, whose Che proved a sparring partner for the ages. I saw it four times and would go again tonight if I could.

by Matt Wolf

Small can be mighty as was proven multiple times over this year – see Kenrex and The Horse of Jenin. But author Brian Watkins’s solo play Weather Girl, which opened at the Soho Theatre in March before travelling off Broadway in the autumn, seems eerier and more prescient than ever in its portrait of an individual – and by extension a society - swerving towards various kinds of apocalypse. Julia McDermott, for whom the show was written, shone as brightly as the California skies that her Fresno meteorologist describes on air even as Tyne Rafaeli's razor-taut production ensured that you exited the theatre both enlightened and emotionally singed.

by Olivia Rook

The journey of this giant stage hit started at the Royal Court in 2024, before transferring to the West End this year and scooping three Olivier Awards in the process. Mark Rosenblatt's debut play is now preparing for a stint on Broadway, where it is likely to have similar Tony Awards success for its clear-sighted writing on antisemitism, as well as John Lithgow's towering, career-best performance as the controversial children's author Roald Dahl. Topical, challenging, and easily my best play of 2025.

by Olivia Rook

A top theatre round-up wouldn't be complete without a certain small bear, who has taken the West End (and beyond) by storm. The long-anticipated musical, with songs by McFly's Tom Fletcher and a heart-felt book by Jessica Swale, is an absolute winner — and likely to melt even the coldest of hearts. James Hameed and Arti Shah are a winning duo as the off and onstage Paddington performers bringing this famous bear to life, while a hugely impressive ensemble cast (including Bonnie Langford and Victoria Hamilton-Barritt) deliver this great musical's powerful message of home, family and belonging.

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by Olivia Rook

Secret Cinema is back with a bang, and their summer show Grease: The Immersive Movie Musical transported audiences to the 1950s thanks to an all-singing, all-dancing immersive production. Battersea Park's Evolution London was transformed into Rydell High, Frosty's Palace, the drive in, and plenty of the other iconic locations from the hit film, with a hard-working ensemble delivering much-loved tunes such as “Greased Lightnin’” and "Summer Nights". The finale had to be seen to be believed.

by Anya Ryan

If there were an award for the most star-studded show of 2025, it would hands down go to The Seagull. Thomas Ostermeier’s production of Chekhov’s classic boasted a cast including Emma Corrin, Jason Watkins and Tanya Reynolds. Of course, the biggest name of them all was Cate Blanchett, who delivered an amped-up, wonderfully catty performance as the deluded actress Arkadina, wielding vanity and vulnerability with ferocious precision. With hordes of meta references about art and performance, plus a handful of brazen fourth-wall breaks, the whole thing carried a glorious air of self-awareness – the perfect way to do Chekhov in the modern age.

by Anya Ryan

For me, Jane Upton’s (the) Woman was without question the most unique and exhilarating show of the year. Her Bruntwood Prize-shortlisted play dismantles the fairy-tale myths of motherhood with endless creativity. Directed by Angharad Jones, the script bounces through scenes from a woman’s life – M’s – following the birth of her first child. She’s also a writer, newly commissioned to create a play about motherhood (provided it includes musical numbers and a healthy dose of crime). What we watch is her writing process unfolding in real time; it’s deeply meta, revealing the reality of motherhood in all its messy, unfiltered glory.

by Holly O'Mahony

Conor McPherson’s own production of his 1997 play The Weir proved quietly magnificent – it was the play exactly as it’s meant to be staged. Brendan Gleeson led a pitch-perfect five-strong ensemble who, over the course of one booze-soaked night in a pub in rural Ireland, spook themselves – and their audience – telling tales of fairies, folklore and strange graveyard sightings. Each story had the viewers rapt, but it was accounts of personal loss, kicked off by Kate Phillips’s Valerie but later continued by Gleeson's Jack, that were the clincher. Gleeson’s performance was one of the most affecting I’ve seen.

by Holly O'Mahony

It’s no easy task to put the senseless violence, irrevocable loss and unbearable longing caused by war on stage, but this collaboration between Irish theatre company Dead Centre, deaf writer Zoë McWhinney and physical theatre company Complicité, achieved it. Not only that, they adapted Ukrainian-American author Ilya Kaminsky’s 2019 book of poems with spectacular creativity. Characters shrank from their human forms into puppets, aerial performers twirled, and a combination of video projections and sign language aided its premise of being a piece of deaf-led theatre – a concept driven by the story, which began with a deaf child getting shot for failing to hear a soldier’s orders.