TOP PICKS
NOVEMBER
for the good stuff,
keep an eye on the fringe
Multicultural and panlingual Voila Festival is coming up in November at multiple London venues including four pub theatres. We also have a round of must-see plays for the month, see below. For more shows check out
our What's On pages
here
BIG LOVE [HERE FOR] written and directed by David Brady at Lion and Unicorn Theatre, Kentish Town 27 October - 7 November
“The problem with making a big entrance is that there’s always someone left to clear it up later.”
He believes in love.
Big songs. Big feelings. Big entrances. The kind of love that comes with a key change, a confetti cannon and absolutely no sense of self-awareness.
He believes love is probably somewhere else. Somewhere warmer. Somewhere louder. Somewhere with better lighting.
Edith Piaf. Strobe lights. Strangers. Perfect nights. Bad decisions. The one that got away. The one that might still be out there.
He believes in loving everyone to bits and throwing it all in the air for the world to see.
Most of all, he believes in looking the truth right in the eye and running away.
Part party, part confession, part love letter to all of life’s best bits, Big Love is a funny, generous and quietly devastating new piece of fringe theatre about chasing extraordinary moments, the people we love to bits, and finally having to answer a call that won’t go away. And that’s a lot of love to cram into one little theatre in Kentish Town.
VOILA! PANLINGUAL THEATRE FESTIVAL AT MULTIPLE VENUES
"we don't see language(s) laid out side by side as fixed, separate entities, any more than we see ‘cultures’ as ‘things’; static and cut off from each other.
Voila! Theatre Festival is living proof that culture is alive and always moving."
Festival Director, Dave Wybrow
Connecting Border-Busting Theatre to Citizens of Everywhere, Voila! theatre festival runs 2 - 22 November 2026 at eight London venues. With 101 shows and event, 60 languages and 450 artists the festival, curated by The Cockpit (theatre in Marylebone), has become an essential showcase and celebration of international theatre.
Host venues include four pub theatres, Barons Court Theatre, Canal Cafe Theatre, Etcetera Theatre and Upstairs at the Gatehouse.
Canal Cafe Theatre:
- BLONDIE BLUE EYES by Romeo Lau on 4, 9, and 10 November. Against the backdrop of an upbeat comedy, BLONDIE BLUE EYES is a tragedy rooted in the horror of breaking down one’s sense of self to fit a social norm.
Barons Court:
- THE HABIT OF GETTING USED TO IT by Nessuno Collective (Argentina/Chile/Spain) 7 & 8 Nov. Through a multidisciplinary narrative, the show builds a performance as a collage of everyday life. Receiver of the inaugural Instituto Cervantes x Voila! Grant, supporting Hispanic artists to present their work at Voila!.
- LAMENT OF THE WANDERING HEAD by Taiwan-based Sun Son Theatre 12 - 14 Nov. It transforms a Southeast Asian myth — the flying human head — into an exploration of diaspora, displacement, and identity. Weaving live music, physical movement, and poetic language across Penang Hokkien and Mandarin.
Etcetera in Camden:
- Italian company Batisfera’s critically acclaimed show THE GUMMY BEARS' GREAT WAR -18 - 22 Nov. An object theatre show that takes place on a table, with real candies, small lights and few spectators; an existential tragicomedy about our search for meaning. Coming to Voila! Theatre Festival following a successful Edinburgh Festival Fringe in 2025, receiving four-star reviews from The Stage and The Telegraph.
Upstairs at the Gatehouse in Highgate:
- Natasha Markou (London Production Studios) returns to Voila! 17 & 18 Nov. Theatre Festival following a sell-out run at Voila 2025 with her previous work. Her new show BREWTOPIA is an intimate two-hander that fuses absurdist tradition with emotional realism to ask: what does it really mean to help someone?
- BASILITRIX by Out of This Crow Productions Ltd 11 - 15 Nov. A Polish family folk rock musical about sisterhood, courage, curiosity, and the search for truth.
Images: Blondie Blue Eyes / Lament of the Wandering Head / The Gummy bears / Basilitrix
SHAKESPEARE'S COUSIN written and directed by Jonathan Moore at White Bear Theatre 10 - 28 November
‘You must choose whom and what you serve. Not to choose is itself a choice.’
A brutal reign of terror consumes Elizabethan England. Enemies of the State are humiliated, tortured and murdered. Spies everywhere. Surveillance. Paranoia grips the land. Into this dangerous world steps young radical genius, Robert Southwell, the most celebrated poet of his age. Cancelled, then erased from history by the Reformation. Recently captured by notorious priest-hunter Sir Richard Topcliffe, he must now answer, through excruciating means, for his most heinous crime: being a Jesuit priest. Southwell is forced to confront not only his own fate, but the question of what we all, especially artists, owe to truth in hostile times.
By the multi-award-winning Author and Director of “Inigo", which had its premiere at the White Bear and has subsequently been performed on every continent of the globe.
FREUD'S LAST SESSION at Tabard Theatre 11 - 28 November
By Mark St. Germain, suggested by The Question of God by Dr. Armand M. Nicholi, Jr.
As Britain stands on the brink of war, Sigmund Freud receives an unexpected visitor: a young Oxford academic named C.S. Lewis.
Over the course of a single afternoon, two of the twentieth century's greatest minds engage in a gripping battle of ideas. As air-raid sirens sound across London, Freud and Lewis debate love, faith, sex, suffering, the existence of God and the meaning of life itself.
Written by Mark St. Germain and inspired by The Question of God by Dr Armand M. Nicholi Jr., this internationally acclaimed drama combines intellectual fireworks with humour, humanity and profound emotional insight.
I CAN SEE THE SUN at The Hope Theatre 12 - 21 November
A surreal, darkly humorous drama inspired by Dante's Divine Comedy.
After taking a wrong turn at Goole on the road back from IKEA, a mother and daughter become lost in the 'Dark Wood' on the North York Moors, when they're confronted with a stranger in the dead of night. Is he a hunter out to steal hearts, or a moorland hiker who's seen the light? Will they row across the river into deeper despair, or find the path to the car before sunrise?
Developed with support from ArcolaLAB, I Can See The Sun is a visually compelling new play from emerging inter-disciplinary theatre company Light The Night, that tenderly explores ancestral trauma, hope and recovery.
ROUND LIGHTS written and directed by Joe Edgar, presented by Sosij Productions at Jack Studio Theatre 17 - 28 November
France, December 1944. Journalist Ben Gardiner has come to the front lines of Europe to ring in the New Year with the pilots of 415th Squadron — young Americans who live their lives by night, and whose stories of unearthly lights and close encounters soon turn Ben’s visit into an otherworldly vigil…
Based on true events, Round Lights is an account of very strange happenings at a very strange time, and of the ordinary (and extraordinary) people whose job it became to document phenomena that remain unexplained to this day. Who is best placed to interpret the impossible? Can awe survive war? And most importantly — is anybody really out there?
Sosij Productions is an award-nominated theatre company founded on a shared desire to make the kind of show you’d want to watch twice.
SEAGULL at The Hen and Chickens Theatre, Islington 18 - 28 November
Everyone wants something. Someone else’s love. A little recognition. Another beginning. In “Seagull", nine women bring Chekhov’s artists, dreamers and disappointed lovers to life. What She Said Collective’s all-female reimagining, directed by Julia Stubbs, finds comedy in our contradictions and heartbreak in the gap between who we are and who we hope to be.
Seasonal shows are coming in, early booking advised ...
A CHRISTMAS CAROL by Charles Dickens, adapted by Geoffrey Simon Brown at Jack Studio Theatre, Lewisham 8 - 30 December
Christmas Eve, 1843. Marley is as dead as a doornail.
But for Scrooge, the night is far from over…
When the clock strikes one Ebenezer embarks on a transformative journey as three mysterious spirits guide him through his past, present, and possible future – revealing the enduring power of compassion, generosity and second chances.
A Christmas Carol is back at the Jack! Come and join us for the UK premiere of Geoffrey Simon Brown’s fun-filled and faithful retelling of a much-loved Christmas story.
Presented by the same in-house team behind the award-winning The Mystery of Irma Vep and Montague’s Millions. Early booking advised.
Psst ... more shows being added each week
