London Shows, 2026

During our three June weeks in London we saw four shows, a play and three musicals, easily out-doing any previous records we might have claimed. The four were: The Play That Goes Wrong, SIX, Operation Mincemeat, and Hadestown. We agreed that SIX was best and that The Play That Goes Wrong was worst, and disagreed about the middle two, Mincemeat and Hadestown. See the comments below for further elaboration. The quality of staging, acting, singing, dancing, etc., was as good as anything you'd see anywhere else, and the array of shows was about the same as you'd see in New York or any other major theatrical center. Interestingly, the theaters in London are much smaller than what you'd see in the US, ranging mostly from 400 to 1300 seats...intimate to cozy, as the pix below will suggest. The show prices are a fraction of a fraction of what you'd pay in New York, and, if you were a serious theater-goer, you could finance a trip to London by taking in half a dozen shows or so. But I digress. There are rather few pix below--theaters don't permit photography or video, of course--but we got a few before and after shots, to which I'll add some comments. Oh, and our experience with SIX ended with a special theological or at least ecclesiastical experience too...

All of our four shows were in the West End, presided over

by this guy, whose own shows were mostly on the other side of

the river

The Duchess, just under 500 seats, where we saw The Play That Goes
Wrong

Part of the humor; more pix here

Tiny stage; although one might learn a bit about stagecraft--all the
things that can go wrong in a production--we thought The Play was about
fifteen minutes of slapstick spread laboriously over two hours; London's
longest-running show, nonetheless

The Fortune, where we saw Operation Mincemeat

All the conveniences

Another tiny stage...blocking must be vastly simplified with so little
space to cover

Vicki ranked Mincemeat 2nd best of the four we saw

I am still troubled by its making a comedy of a rather serious war
undertaking; see the classic 1956 British film The Man Who Never
Was for something closer to the truth, based on the book by the main
figure in the real Operation Mincemeat; and including one of the most
wrenching war-time grief scenes I know of...definitely not comedy 

The Lyric, where we saw Hadestown

A bit of a nosebleed view, but, hey, the tickets were only £40 each

I really enjoyed the classical focus; Vicki didn't like the non-happy ending

Grand old theatre

We saw SIX at the Vaudeville

Overall best, we thought

So after SIX we elected to walk back to the apartment and
our route took us past Westminster Abbey, where the bells
were peeling and much pomp and ecclesiastical circumstance
were going on, and

Vicki, who is up on these things, quickly discerned the new
Archbishop of Canterbury (funny hat) was being welcomed
to Westminster, officially, and got these pix...

Since we'd just seen a musical about the Head of the
Church of England, his six wives, that is, we thought seeing
the two Archbishops was pretty special too, especially the
Church of England's first female archbishop...