Shows to See: Aug-Oct 2025
Theatre & performance to see, taking you from the end of summer into Autumn. This list does not include Edinburgh Fringe. Head over to this post for our Fringe recommendations.
Want to find friendly folks to watch some of these shows with? Join our Dykes To Watch Shows With WhatsApp group.
In this list you’ll find:
Shows we’ve seen and loved: shout out to 2 of our recent faves, Main Character Energy by Temi Wilkey and Really Good Exposure by Megan Prescott.
Artists we always trust to create something well worth watching: We’ll never miss a Bryony Kimmings show!
Stuff we thought just looked really interesting: An audio walk through a Suffolk nature reserve? A deep-dive into the trans history of Basingstoke? A South London festival of work by disabled artists? Yes, yes, and yes please, yes.
From solo shows to ensemble pieces, long tours to one-nighters, cabaret mixed-bills to epic plays - let’s go:
Dear Young Monster
Camden Fringe
Venues across Camden until Aug 24
As always, there are loads of interesting shows to catch in Camden this month. We like the look of: Who The Hell is Robert Wayne? (until Aug 13); They Were Roommates (until Aug 13); Stevie and Nora (Aug 12-15); Terrarium Network (Aug 14-15) The Lesbians of Forest Gate (Aug 16-17); Sluts With Consoles (Aug 19); Reasonable Crash Out (Aug 21-23); The Liminoid (Aug 21 & 23); Isn’t It Byronic (Aug 21-23).
Dear Young Monster
Soho Theatre Aug 5-16, Sheffield Playhouse Sept 5-6
A young trans man, struggling at the start of his medical transition, drops out of university and retreats to his quiet hometown. His friends are gone. The neighbours are watching. His body is changing faster than he can make sense of it… until a midnight screening of Frankenstein offers him a strange kind of salvation. Staring into the monster’s sad, stitched-together eyes, something finally clicks: for the first time, he feels seen. Dear Young Monster is a vivid, witty and hopeful exploration of what it means to become yourself in a world that’s growing ever more hostile.
Ness: An audio landscape
Orford Ness Suffolk, July 5 - Oct 26
Step off the boat at Orford Ness, put on your headphones, and wander through a world of sound. Ness speaks gull, speaks wave, speaks bracken & lapwing, speaks bullet, ruin, gale, deception. Zoë Svendsen teamed up with sound designer Carolyn Downing to sculpt Robert Macfarlane’s words in the unique and uncanny environment of Orford Ness. for a site-responsive performance in which you follow the five forms of nature – She, He, It, They, As – as they converge to solve a crisis in this forbidden and forgotten place.
Scene/Change
Sherman Theatre Cardiff, Aug 15
Celebrate South Asian theatre-making in Wales with JHOOM this summer during South Asian Heritage Month! Following on from a successful sold out show last year Scene/Change is back. The first programme of its kind that celebrates Welsh and Wales based theatre-makers of South Asian heritage. Four South Asian writers will each produce an original 15-minute script; they are Kia Shah, Priya Hall, Nadheem and Durre Shahwar.
Free Range
Soho Theatre Bar Walthamstow, Aug 22
Free Range is turning 2 and to celebrate they’re teaming up with SOHO THEATRE to for a bumper show and afterparty with 9 performers (plus host, Bicurious George). Expect everything from drag to pop music to kinky poetry to stand up comedy. Stick around after the show for an afterparty until 2 AM with Ki Griffin on the decks.
Deaf Republic
Royal Court , Aug 29 - Sept 16
A gunshot in occupied territory. A deaf boy is killed for disobeying orders he couldn’t hear. The next day, the whole town wakes up deaf. Adapted from the poems of Ukrainian-American author Ilya Kaminsky, Deaf Republic is an epic modern fable of war, humanity and collective resistance. World-renowned theatre company Dead Centre make their Royal Court debut, collaborating with Sign Language poet Zoë McWhinney. Told through a mix of spoken English, British Sign Language (BSL), creative captioning and silence, Deaf Republic brings together an ensemble of deaf and hearing actors, aerial performers, puppetry, live cinema and poetry.
The Womb
Arcola Theatre Dalston, Aug 27–30
It’s absurd. It’s naked (not literally). It’s bloody (literally). It’s about women. The Womb. This is a place where no one knows the address, but everyone knows how to get there. This is a place where no one knows what it is, but everyone is familiar with it. Maybe not everyone, but every woman. Women come here to forget. But can they forget the things that made them end up in this place? Be prepared to laugh at how utterly ridiculous this play is, and maybe wonder if The Womb isn’t so different from our own world after all!
Let People Like You
Norwich Theatre Stage Two, Aug 29
Edalia Day’s new solo show blends heart-hugging poetry, comedy songs, and beautiful close-harmony singing. It’s a celebration of joy, self-acceptance, and the power of community, wrapped in dazzling spoken word and live music.
Black Power Desk (photo: Courtney Nathan Phillip)
Black Power Desk
Brixton House, Sept 1-28
1970s London. The streets awash with a fever of political unrest, the rhythm of the sound system culture is birthing a new era of soulful lover’s rock, fusing RnB and reggae, amidst the covert Black Power Desk operations of New Scotland Yard. As tensions rise, the community rallies together to stand against injustices and racial divide. BLACK POWER DESK is a powerful reimagining and exploration of what it means to love and fight for freedom. A moving story of sisters who need to reconnect for the sake of their community.
The Switchboard Project
The Hope Theatre Islington, Sept 2-13
It’s 1985. Above a bookshop in King’s Cross, volunteers answer calls from across the country. There's been a vicious queer-bashing in Leeds, a young man in Bristol dreads his HIV test, and a breathless voice really wants to know what they're wearing. For Lou, Joan, Nana and Jackie, it’s just another shift. Battling phone line outages, understaffing, and vanishing pens, these four lesbians are determined to answer the call to connect their divided community. Inspired by real phone calls and interviews with ex-Switchboard volunteers.
Really Good Exposure
Soho Theatre, Sept 2-13
Molly was a child star, now she’s considering getting into porn. What would you do if your acting career peaked in 2009 (well before the Me Too movement) and you hadn’t booked another role in years? Exposed for working as a stripper, dumped by her agent, and shunned by the public, Molly’s giving mainstream success one last shot. Enter a world of child stars, strip clubs, and casting couches – and question what it means to earn a living as a performer.
Explaining Being Pan To Nan
Touring, including: Weston Super Mare, Taunton, Harrogate & Eastleigh Sept 18 - Oct 2
Sexting in your 80s, knitting kinks and discovering Grandad’s penchant for a Sunday blow job - this stand up / poetry show unpacks explaining your queer identity (non-binary, pansexual) to your 86 year old Nan. Expect butt plugs, pegging dildos and maybe even a few stray tears from this wildly explicit, unexpectedly heartwarming solo show.
OxPHWOARD 10 year anniversary
Oxford Old Fire Station, Sept 5
With some of the best in the subversive UK burlesque and drag scene, OxPHWOARd is an explosion of queer, neo and boundary-pushing cabaret: from the fierce and feisty to the silly and surreal. With a kitschy approach and a killer soundtrack, this charming show promises to gleefully annihilate preconceptions about gender, race, sexuality, and what it means to be sexy with a wry smile and a face full of glitter. With a diverse host of drag darlings and burlesque babes, and the odd party game too: think strong, think silly, and think sexy.
Not Your Superwoman
Bush Theatre, Sept 6 - Nov 1
In the aftermath of the death of their matriarch, Joyce and her daughter Erica struggle with what to do next. She was the glue that held everything together, so what now? Joyce thought she’d set Erica up for a better life, given her everything she never had. But Erica wonders if despite the therapy, the journaling, the recycling – maybe she is no different from her mum after all. Or her mum’s mum. Maybe they didn’t break the cycle. Maybe the cycle can never be broken.
Not Your Superwoman
Rosie Jones: I Can’t Tell What She’s Saying
On tour, including: Taunton, Bradford, Kendal, Lancaster, Portsmouth, Leeds, London, Glasgow, Edinburgh (+ many more locations listed) Sept 9 - Dec 4
Join self-professed prick and star of Taskmaster Rosie Jones as she heads back out on the road with her brand-new stand-up show. She's talking about the big stuff: being single, the pressures of representing huge sections of the population, and gravy. Oh, and boobs.
Bacchae
National Theatre, Sept 13 - Nov 1
The Bacchae aren’t standing on the sidelines whilst the men have all the fun. These fangirls may be a pack but they’re not animals… They are stage-storming powerhouses ready to cause chaos in Thebes. Whilst the Bacchae maraud in the mountains, their god Dionysos is taking part in his own f*cked-up family Olympics. He’s here to bring down his cousin King Pentheus. All to prove to the chorus of women that he’s more than just the god of rhyme, wine and a good time.
Consumed
Touring to: Coventry, Leeds, Guildford & Sheffield, Sept 3 - Oct 11
Four generations of Northern Irish women, reunited under one roof. A 90th birthday party that no-one seems to want. A house full of hungry ghosts, with more than one skeleton in the closet. Turn off your phones at dinner.
Period Drama
Oxford Playhouse Sept 5, Porters Cardiff Sept 13 (more tour dates TBA)
Period Drama by Olga Kaleta (with integrated BSL by Sherrie Eugene-Hart) is a surreal, episodic show about mental health, identity and recovery that mixes autobiographical storytelling with bold physicality. Exploring personal experiences of chronic anxiety in a world where fear is starting to look like common sense, Period Drama offers a deep dive into the question of wellness through a feminist lens, via slasher flicks, bloody knickers and existential dilemmas of insects.
The Law Of Mayhem
The Haymarket, Basingstoke, Sept 18-20
The year is 1949, and Roberta Cowell; racing driver, RAF pilot and ‘It’ girl, meets Michael Dillon; a ship’s doctor who pursued Buddhism into the high Himalayas. Together they will change the course of British transgender history. Yet after just three short years, they never speak again. Separated by time and space, Michael and Roberta meet for one last impossible encounter, to find out if the thing that brought them together was the same thing that broke them apart – The Law of Mayhem.
The Law of Mayhem
Liberty Festival
Battersea Arts Centre & other Wandsworth Venues, Sept 24-28
Liberty Festival will spotlight and celebrate the very best disabled artists in Wandsworth and London as part of a joyful, radically inclusive festival where everyone is welcome. The festival will explore the disabled experience – past, present and future – and push artistic boundaries to create a fresh, resonant and vital experience, leaving a lasting legacy of widening inclusion to the arts in the borough.
Goblin
Battersea Arts Centre, Sept 25
Jack doesn’t care what you think you’ve heard – there’s no goblin in this show. They’re sorry you’ve been misled so terribly. They’re just a nice, normal human being. And, quite frankly, it’s really strange that you’d believe otherwise. GOBLIN is an honest, silly, confronting, funny, cathartic mashup of clown, new writing and Neo-Futuristic based theatre.
Hasbian
Touring, including to: Worcester, Oxford, Basingstoke, Norwich, Exeter, Durham, Newcastle & Salford, Sept 27 - Nov 19
How did Beth go from a childhood dreaming of The Wizard of Oz, to cringey Cruel Intentions-obsessed adolescence? From proudly identifying as a teenage lesbian, to discovering that boys are also appealing? Beth’s real teenage diary is brought to life in vivid hilarity in Hasbian. Dripping in equal measures with heartfelt earnestness, sharp irony, and humour that bubbles up in the place between youthful confidence and pubescent self-doubt, Hasbian delves behind the rollercoaster of teenage life, into the reality of growing up queer in Brighton (the UK’s Gay Capital) under Section 28.
My English Persian Kitchen
Touring UK & Ireland, including: Soho Theatre, Bristol Old Vic, Pavilion Theatre Dún Laoghaire, Lyric Theatre Belfast, Sept 30 - Oct 25
What would you take if you were forced to leave home with no hope of returning? How would you make a fresh start somewhere completely new? This is the true story about one woman who loses everything. Remembering the tastes and aromas of her mother’s kitchen with live cooking on stage, she recreates the dishes of her childhood and homeland, building a new life and community around food.
Main Character Energy
On tour, including: Bristol Old Vic, Sheffield Theatres (more tour dates TBA) Oct 6 - Nov 29
A beautiful and supremely talented black actress is putting on an autobiographical one woman show to finally take up the space she’s been so routinely denied. It’s your privilege, your honour and your pre-eminent pleasure to give her all the attention she deserves. In this ‘perfect send up of the one woman show’ (Guardian) our heroine is forced to confront her insatiable need for attention in a show that is as self-aware as it is self-indulgent. A high camp cocktail of comedy and cabaret, this flamboyant parody is an uplifting and life affirming celebration of embracing your most authentic self.
Gwenda's Garage
Sheffield Theatres Oct 15 – Sat 25, Southwark Playhouse Oct 30 - Nov 29
1980s Sheffield, Thatcher’s Britain: politics, passion, protest... where anything might happen and usually does. Three female mechanics set up their own garage in a run-down area of the city, naming it after Gwenda Stewart, a pioneering racing driver. Gwenda’s Garage is a fabulous new musical – an exuberant call to arms, fired by fun, feminism, friendship, above all an affirming belief in the power of collective action. Dismantling the patriarchy one spark plug at a time.
Gwenda’s Garage