London’s West End theatres are undoubtedly a marvel, but London boasts many other theatres too—often known as Off West End—who shine no less brightly than Shaftesbury Avenue and play a significant role in making London the theatre capital of the world. One of the great pleasures of Off West End theatres is their hospitality and informality: you can often get food in the theatre before the show, and you may even find yourself rubbing shoulders with the cast in the bar after the show. That won’t happen in the West End, where audiences are hurried out as soon as the performance ends.

You can find stars off-West End too, whether it is Mark Rylance appearing in Tartuffe (Remixed) at the 200-seater Marylebone Theatre, Maria Friedman leading the cast in the musical Kimberly Akimbo at the Hampstead Theatre or Downtown star Michelle Dockery, starring in Bloodsport: After Helen of Troy, written by 1536 writer Ava Pickett, at the Theatre Royal Stratford East, the East End theatre made famous by the late, great Joan Littlewood.

Some of these off-West End theatres are tiny—like the long-established Finborough theatre in Earl’s Court, where Nicola McAuliffe is currently starring in Annie Wobbler (Revisited). Others have specialisms such as new writing and that includes the Royal Court in Sloane Square, whose production of Giant transferred to the West End and Broadway, and where Tilda Swinton currently stars in Man to Man. Plenty serve their local neighbourhood but also attract in-the-know theatre-goers from all across London.

Take the Lyric Hammersmith in West London, which is currently staging Lucy Kirkwood’s tense post-nuclear-disaster thriller, The Children, in a production starring Meera Syal and which next month revives August Wilson’s Fences, a meaty drama about how thwarted dreams can haunt the next generation, with Ray Fearon as Troy, the would-be basketball star whose hopes were dashed by racism; who is still trying to live his dreams through his sons. Daniel Bailey—whose production of Red Pitch, which transferred from the Bush to the West End—directs.

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