We raved about Piaf when it opened at the Donmar Warehouse but unless you were super quick on the uptake or enjoy standing in a queue for ages at 9am, chances are you haven't seen it. Well fear not, if you're keen on Elena Roger's super intense performance of the French diva, the show has just announced a transfer to the Vaudeville Theatre on The Strand for 14 weeks starting 16 October with the......

66(6)! The Coventry Street Vampire It is a case obscure, hardly spoken of. Whilst the legend of the Highgate 'vampire' continues to intrigue and be discussed, something just as wicked occurred several decades before, in the West End at Coventry Street. In 1922 a giant bat-like creature had been seen in the vicinity of West Drayton Church, as I have mentioned before, and some believed it was the vampyric spirit of a creature once......

Following Westminster's purge of the Oxford Street sandwich boards whose draconian fines kicked in yesterday, the New West End Company (another of those BID companies) is also taking steps to improve the 'up West' shopping experience by quizzing its 100,000 retail staff on their knowledge of the "wonders" of the area. The company, funded by the area's businesses aims to make shopping in the West End a more pleasant experience for tourists and locals......

Fashion v Sport kicks off this week's cultural contributions, opening today at the V&A. Don your favourite shellsuit and examine the unique relationship between fashion and sport (is the missing link money?). Theatrically speaking, there's masses of exciting new stuff to choose from this week. Risk a dramatic shower tomorrow as Timon of Athens opens at the Globe, and the lovely Topol starts crooning his way through Gigi in Regent's Park. If you'd rather......

Southwark's Menier Chocolate Factory has well established its reputation with productions being transferred to the West End since opening in 2004. So it is not so much a surprise as you may think that two stars of television and the stage took to the tiny 190 seat theatre last night. Starring Connie Fisher and Alistair McGowan, 'They're Playing Our Song' was packed with critics and guests (including showbiz theatre producer David Ian) all out......

It would seem that things are a tad awry in theatre land. The *feel-good*, sing-a-long, who-needs-a-plot musical is insidiously creeping across the West End, to the extent that there are but seven serious plays on at our main theatres (if you can call the Mouse Trap serious), compared with twenty four musicals. It’s the bums-on-seats factor. Money in the bank over a BAFTA on the mantelpiece. Now it has to be said that Londonist is......

Back in April we reported that retail sales were looking healthy early on in '08. Seems the trend has continued, with spending in central London last month up 8.7% compared to June 2007, while the national figure dropped by 0.4%. Continental visitors flush with sterling-thumping Euros, along with heavy discounting and aggressive mid-season sales from department stores, have helped retailers to healthy profit margins, though the research firm KPMG cautioned that the trend doesn't necessarily......

A sight ubiquitous with West End shopping could be scrubbed forever from the streets, if Westminster Council get their way: they are planning on banishing "sandwich boards". Such walking advertisements have been scattered across London since time immemorial, and for much of their existence performed a valuable service, offering, in the pre-horoscope days, vital globs of millenarian musing: "The end is nigh" and "Repent! Repent! Repent!" being two popular missives. With rumours of the......

Londonist's been looking for a proper, new, bona fide West End Musical for you for ages. (Marguerite: too many Nazis; Never Forget: too many hens; Into the Hoods: too street; Brief Encounter, Dirty Dancing: too not-the-film; Gone With The Wind: too meh...) Decent, take-your-mum's-mate-along musicals are hard to come by. In Zorro, we're happy to let you know we think we've found one. What do you need from a good show? A cheeky hero......

There are more theatre openings in London this week than decent sunny spells, many of them featuring some familiar (read: off telly) faces... Under the Blue Sky, a story of three intertwined love stories with Catherine Tate, a couple of girls you'll recognise from Cranford, and him from the IT Crowd starts previews at the Duke of York today. Over at the Vaudeville, more Cranfordians tread the boards in The Female of the Species......

We can't really feign any surprise to learn that London's parking is the world's priciest. While we generally favour ambulation via foot, bicycle or (occasionally) Hoverboard, our car-bound chums are forced to hand over £586 a month to park their motor in the City, while the West End isn't much cheaper at £568. Just need to park it for a day? That'll be £34, guv (unless you get in early). Puts idle kvetching about public......

When you get back from your audition for Showtime Challenge 3 on Saturday, what better way to extend the musical showbizzery than joining Sadlers Wells Dance Club's West End night? Even if you chicken out of trying out for the stage yourself this is a fabulous way to indulge your West End whimsy and learn routines from Chicago, West Side Story and the ultimate dancers' musical, A Chorus Line. Camp it up, honeys! Heels,......

Some new faces will be taking on the West End, for better or worse. Fresh out of Doctor Who, Catherine Tate is in Under The Blue Sky, where she'll be playing a nymphomaniac (yes, you read that correctly). Tate has also mentioned her desire to take on Shakespeare in the future. Hey, if Sienna can hack it, why not Catherine? You can see her, as well at The IT Crowd's Chris O'Dowd, at the......

Who’s the first performer that comes to mind when you think “Nelson Mandela’s 90th birthday bash”? Amy Winehouse? Right, us neither. London housing prices fell by 0.5% in April. Brilliant! At that rate, Londonist should be able to afford a home here around 2028. The deputy mayor for young people warns that there is no “magic solution” to the recent spate of violence among teens. No magic solution, perhaps, but let’s hope that other......

Operation: Rebrand Britney is gathering pace. Days after her celebrated cameo in US sitcom How I Met Your Mother - where the former teen icon excelled as a ditzy, obsessive receptionist - Britney has reportedly been offered a meatier role to chew over: she has been tapped up to play Blanche Dubois in a West End production of Tennessee Williams' A Streetcar Named Desire. It's not rare for the enervating effects of the London......

London theatre is highly regarded around the world for its resilience, its resourcefulness and downright refusal to stop for anyone or anything. Even during the Blitz, the show went on and so it did when a power cut in the West End disrupted the opening night of a new, star cast play. Playwright Yasmina Reza has had huge, long-running success already in the West End with Art , and her new play God of......

Uh, media exposure, that is. Prostitutes are, like, all over the place this week. First, a prostitution ring takes down the Sheriff of Wall Street. Then the BBC kicks off its newest musical talent competition, I’d Do Anything, in which contestants compete for the chance to play Nancy, hooker with a heart of gold, in a West End revival of the musical Oliver! Londonist cites the two examples and declares it a cultural phenomenon.......

What happens in a Tube station when all the passengers have gone home? Why do Tube workers carry cards about rat piss? And why isn't standing on the right of an escalator necessarily a good thing? Londonist finds answers on our latest nocturnal investigation. Some of London's busiest Tube stations are in a mess. Missing tiles and chicken-wire cornices are a familiar site, especially at King's Cross and Leicester Square. It's a case of......

Summer Strallen, who played the similarly named Summer Shaw on teen soap Hollyoaks, has just made her debut in The Sound of Music at London's Palladium Theatre. If, like us, you enjoy a bit of a Hollyoaks omnibus on a hungover Sunday, you'll be familiar with Summer's journey from soap star to West End star. For those of you who are Hollyoaks impaired, it's actually all a bit confusing. Strallen joined the Hollyoaks cast......

The Valley of Fear, out on 20th March, compiles illustrations by a forgotten ‘great Londoner’: Austin Osman Spare. If you’ve never heard of him, don’t worry—most people haven’t. And yet, to a small band of collectors he’s one of the jewels in the capital’s treasure house. This little-known hero, who in his early life was fêted by the critics and gallery owners of the West End, used the method of automatic drawing 20 years......

As we ease out of the austerity, self-denial and penny-pinching of January, so too the arts world comes even further out of its shell. This week sees a whole host of exciting openings. Take your pick; payday's passed and February's just round the corner! Be the first Gilbert and Sullivan's hilarious opera about love, corrupt local government, marriage, executions and heroics, The Mikado comes to the Gielgud Theatre from Wednesday. Alistair McGowan stars as......

Crippled clipper to get cash injection However, local boroughs are still passing round the begging bowl - and does anybody have a spare £250 million stuck behind the sofa to help out West End theatres? Caterwauling Kate's karaoke marathons not entirely popular with new neighbours Department for Transport rapped on the knuckles over Metronet's "spectacular failure" Girl and pa lash themselves to Japanese embassy in anti-whaling protest. Image courtesy of onionbagblogger via the Londonist......

London’s councils have agreed to fund more green projects. An awfully large black market DVD ring has been busted in South London. Patients of the Epsom and St. Helier NHS Trust are undoubtedly seeing red today – theirs is officially the meanest hospital in Britain. The boys in blue have come up with a grand idea in Bermondsey – lure troublesome teens off the streets with free Xbox/Playstation access. Golden Globes in the offing......

One of the most thrilling aspects of live comedy is surely its intimacy. When you watch a big act in a small room, a charming comic can make you believe that they are there just for you, as if the jokes they tell were being told exclusively for your pleasure. There's a new club in town that is trying to go one step further. Anthology is a night in Portabello Green W10 which does......

Big names making big sculptures are making big waves. Six new ideas for sculptures for Trafalgar Square are open to public viewing from today - and you will have the chance to pick which one will follow the current whacking huge great Thomas Schütte coloured plexiglass sculpture that sits on the fourth plinth right now. The fourth plinth has remained empty since money ran out and a permanent statue of King William IV couldn't......

New Years Eve is a funny one. Some people think it's the best night ever, and those who don't are kind of forced into thinking maybe they should be thinking that and invariably end up having a rubbish night. But how about you just think about it as an excuse to go dancing - that's never a bad idea. Here's our favourite dancefloor happenings tomorrow night. If it's dance music you want, then absolutely......

You may have heard of Caliper Boy - we've previously spotted his era-spanning scrawls around London and learned a bit more about the legend of this early 1800s downtrodden child, allegedly locked away in a cellar in 1819 by his prostitute mother until age 12, when he escaped to find his father. dANTE OR dIE is a theatre company that dances, sings and performs a type of musical theatre that is the complete opposite......

Four weeks till Christmas! Argh. Funds are all focused on present buying and getting through the party season but we still want to go out and about because the heating isn't working properly at home. We can't afford to go and see Gandalf drop his trousers in King Lear but, thankfully, there's lots of cheap and interesting stuff about as usual. Monday: Start the week with an event truly in the spirit of London......

Had TfL existed in his time, the great Samuel Johnson may well have amended his famous aphorism to read "a man who is bored of London needs to hop on the number 19 bus". In its perambulation from Battersea to Finsbury Park, the 19 cuts a swath across the capital's economic and cultural barriers, revealing the world within one city that modern London manifests. Vogue has certainly been impressed by the number 19. The......

Hooray! It's nearly Halloween! Jack-o-lanterns a plenty, scary masks and annoying trick or treaters who get hyped up on way too many e-numbers (and probably a few cans of cider nowadays). Still, there's so much stuff going on this year, you'd be a fool to stay inside hiding under your sofa this 31st October. It just wouldn't be Halloween without the Rocky Horror Show. So Everyman Cinema snapped up this spooky treat. Dress up,......