Oh, you, the darkest of months. November. Yes, Christmas is coming, and New Year, and gifts, and joy — but for now, here you are: darkness, wind, and even rain falling almost parallel to the ground. Yet on such evenings, if you do dare to step out of your warm dressing gown, let it be for the theatre. So, what’s on in November? Here — see for yourself.
All My Sons
Wyndham’s Theatre Charing Cross Rd, London WC2H 0DA
Photo by wyndhamstheatre.co.uk
Arthur Miller wrote this play in 1946, and it became his first commercial success. Thanks to it, we didn’t lose one of the great American playwrights — Miller had promised himself to quit writing if All My Sons failed. As often happens, chance helped: a newspaper article gave Miller the spark for the story. Even after 80 years, the plot feels strikingly relevant. It’s a tale of two friends, of betrayal, love, and painful confessions — staged by Ivo van Hove, known for his daringly modern interpretations of “ageless classics” (we wrote earlier about his A View from the Bridge).
The lead role of Joe Keller is played by Bryan Cranston, star of Breaking Bad and multiple Tony, Emmy, and Golden Globe winner. Keller is the image of the perfect post-war American businessman — until terrible secrets from his past come to light, tied to his former factory’s wartime contracts. His wife Kate is played by Marianne Jean-Baptiste, another Golden Globe winner.
End
Dorfman Theatre South Bank, London SE1 9PX
Photo by nationaltheatre.org.uk
This is the stage premiere of End, the new play by David Eldridge, one of Britain’s leading dramatists whose works are regularly staged at the National Theatre, Royal Court, Almeida and elsewhere. It completes his trilogy that began with Beginning (2017) and Middle (2020).
If you worry about not understanding the final part without the first two — don’t. End is not only new but completely self-contained. The three plays have different characters; what unites them is the evolution of relationships over time.
In Beginning, after a party, two shy, lonely people — Laura and Danny — awkwardly decide to start a relationship. In Middle, Maggie and Gary, a middle-aged couple weary of their marriage and their own compromises, mourn what might have been. And End is about Alfie and Julie, an elderly couple who have lived an entire life together. Clive Owen, Golden Globe nominee for Hemingway & Gellhorn, plays Alfie, and Saskia Reeves, known for Slow Horses, plays Julie.
Punch
Apollo Theatre Shaftesbury Ave, London W1D 7EZ
Photo by theapollotheatre.co.uk
A new play by James Graham, based on the real story of Jacob Dunne, a nineteen-year-old who kills another young man with a single punch. Released from prison on New Year’s Eve 2012, Dunne confessed he “almost hated himself” — at twenty, his life was shattered by his own actions, and not only his.
No home, no money, no future — until he meets the victim’s parents. The boy’s mother, Joan, helps Jacob rediscover himself — and in doing so, saves herself too.
The play premiered at Nottingham Playhouse in spring 2024 — fittingly, since the real events happened there. Its success exceeded expectations, and now, in November 2025, it arrives in the West End. David Shields (known from The Crown and Doctor Who) plays Dunne, just as he did in Nottingham. The same team returns: Adam Penford directs; also starring Julie Hesmondhalgh, Tony Hirst, and others. Graham refined the script — making it tighter and more focused — and the design became richer and more dynamic. After all, this is the West End!
The Unbelievers
Royal Court Theatre 50–51 Sloane Square, London SW1W 8AS
Photo by royalcourttheatre.com
This harrowing play by Nick Payne, Olivier and Tony nominee, is pure tragedy in the Aristotelian sense — painful, cleansing, cathartic.
Miriam’s son Oscar disappeared seven years ago. She cannot forget, cannot believe, cannot let go. Nicola Walker, known for Annika, plays Miriam in a production directed by Marianne Elliott.
Memory, faith, and loss are the core themes — and the suffocating grief that grips Miriam grips the audience too. After the show, you leave with your heart aching for your own children — even those sprawled on the sofa in hoodies, grumpy and unwashed, with homework undone.
Will Miriam ever meet Oscar again? Neither the play nor the production gives a clear answer.
“As your faith is, so will it be unto you.”
The Assembled Parties
Hampstead Theatre Eton Ave, London NW3 3EU
Photo by hampsteadtheatre.com
Playwright Richard Greenberg, a Yale graduate, wrote The Assembled Parties in 2013. After its Broadway premiere, it earned three Tony nominations, including Best Play.
In 2025, Blanche McIntyre, a director who has worked extensively with Shakespeare, Aeschylus, Chekhov, and Stoppard, brings it to London. McIntyre is gifted at untangling the fine threads of human relationships — quietly, carefully, helping actors find the truth in their roles.
Her Assembled Parties is a comic drama (or a tragic comedy) about a Jewish family in New York. Between the two acts lie twenty years: the same lavish apartment, the same people — only some have grown, some have aged, and some are gone. The true main character is time itself — His Imperial Majesty, changing fates, faces, and hearts.
Tracy-Ann Oberman, who last season reimagined The Merchant of Venice with herself as Shylock, plays Julie — vivid, witty, magnetic. And the stage design by James Cotterill (who also designed Kenneth Branagh’s Hamlet with Tom Hiddleston) turns Hampstead Theatre into an atmosphere of elegant warmth.
A Midsummer Night’s Dream
Sam Wanamaker Playhouse 21 New Globe Walk, Bankside, London SE1 9DT
A new co-production between Shakespeare’s Globe and Headlong. Holly Race Roughan, Artistic Director of Headlong, previously directed Henry V at the Globe, worked with the RSC, and this autumn staged Small Hotel with Ralph Fiennes at Theatre Royal Bath.
Together with Naeem Hayat, with whom she collaborated on Henry V, Roughan transforms Shakespeare’s most romantic comedy into a winter forest dream. It fits perfectly — candlelight flickering in the Sam Wanamaker Playhouse, the pre-Christmas atmosphere, the touch of magic. The result feels like The Snow Queen meets Narnia, and yet remains pure Shakespeare.
Hedydd Dylan, RADA graduate and star of Emmerdale and The Taming of the Shrew, plays Titania and Hippolyta. Michael Marcus, a British actor with credits at the RSC, National Theatre, and Shakespeare’s Globe, plays Theseus and Oberon. Sergo Vares, an Estonian actor familiar to London audiences from Hamlet at the Barbican, plays Puck.
Coven
Kiln Theatre 269 Kilburn High Rd, London NW6 7JR
Photo by londontheatre.co.uk
A brand-new original musical by Rebecca Brewer and Daisy Chute, weaving English history with folklore and binding it all together with live music. There are folk melodies, rich harmonies, and an energy that feels both ancient and strikingly modern.
Directed by Miranda Cromwell (Olivier Award winner for Death of a Salesman at the Young Vic), Coven fuses the terror of the past with the urgency of the present — and a distinctly feminist voice.
The deep roll of drums and low murmur of tambourines create the feeling of an ancient ritual. In the trembling candlelight, amid mist and the sounds of nature, unfolds the story of the Pendle witches — perhaps the most famous witch trial of the 17th century.
King James I, obsessed with the idea that witches were real servants of the devil, even wrote a manual for identifying them — Daemonologie. And we know how such “identifications” ended…
Nine-year-old Jennet (played by Gabrielle Brooks) lives in poverty, fear, and confusion. Her testimony, forced out by interrogators, becomes the chief evidence against her own family and neighbors. But Jennet herself cannot escape the brutal machinery she set in motion.
Coven is not simply a story about witches or a grim chapter of English history. It’s a powerful reflection on female strength and resistance to a system that has crushed women for centuries.
