6 Best Performing Arts in London, England

Opened in 1959 and now a Soho institution, this three-screen independent cinema runs a vibrant program of first-run arthouse and mainstream films, along with an engaging calendar of director talks, Q&As, film festival events, and other cinephile offerings. The first-floor mezzanine bar is great for a quiet drink, even when Soho's Shaftesbury Avenue is heaving with people. There are other equally historic and wonderful Curzon cinemas in Mayfair, Bloomsbury, and Victoria.

Hollywood stars often perform at this not-for-profit theater in diverse and daring new works, bold interpretations of the classics, and small-scale musicals. Heavy-hitters like Nicole Kidman, Gwyneth Paltrow, and Ewan McGregor have all graced the stage.

An architectural extravaganza of Edwardian style, this baroque-style theater has a magnificent 2,350-seat auditorium and a rooftop glass dome with a bar and great views. As one of the city's most venerable venues, the Coliseum functions mainly as the home of the English National Opera, which produces innovative opera, sung in English, for lower prices than the nearby Royal Opera House. In recent years the company also has presented musicals, sometimes featuring star opera singers. During opera's off-season (including summertime and during winter holidays), the house hosts the English National Ballet and other troupes. Guided tours offering fascinating insights into the architecture and history of the building take place on selected dates at 11 am.

When this complex designed by Sir Denys Lasdun opened in 1976, Londoners were slow to warm up to the low-rise brutalist block, with King Charles III once describing it as "a clever way of building a nuclear power station in the middle of London without anyone objecting." But whatever you think of the outside, the inside offers generally superb theatrical experiences at (relatively) friendly prices—several of which (like War Horse or One Man, Two Guvnors) have gone on to become long-running Broadway hits. Interspersed with the three theaters—the 1,150-seat Olivier, the 890-seat Lyttelton, and the 450-seat Dorfman—is a multilayered foyer with exhibitions, bars, restaurants, and free entertainment. Musicals, classics, and plays are performed by top-flight professionals, whom you can sometimes catch giving foyer talks as well. Seventy-five-minute backstage tours incorporating prop-making and scene-painting workshops as well as the architecture of the building are offered on weekdays at 5 pm and Saturdays at noon. Each weekend in August, the free outdoor River Stage Festival presents live music, dance, family workshops, and DJ sets in front of the theater. There are £10 Friday Rush tickets for some performances.

Along with Milan's La Scala, New York's Metropolitan, and the Palais Garnier in Paris, this is one of the world's great opera houses. First established in 1732, the Royal Opera House has staged countless spectacular performances during its illustrious history, while recent shows have tended toward a more contemporary repertoire. Whatever the style, the extravagant 2,250-seat auditorium delivers a serious dose of gilt and glamour. The famed Royal Ballet performs classical and contemporary repertoire here, too, and smaller-scale works of both opera and dance are presented in the Linbury Theatre and Clore Studio. A small allocation of tickets for each performance of main stage productions for the week ahead—even those that are sold out—goes on sale online at 1 pm every Friday.

If you wish to see the famed auditorium but are not able to procure a ticket, you can join a backstage tour or one of the less frequent tours of the auditorium; they book up several weeks in advance.

This quirky two-screen repertory film theater just north of Leicester Square and on the edge of Chinatown offers you a chance to catch up with indie arthouse films, documentaries, and even classic blockbusters you may have missed. A second screen upstairs shows newer movies at more typical West End prices. With 300 velvet seats, this is where London's "Singalong Screenings" took off; come in character and sing along to the likes of The Sound of Music, Grease, Dirty Dancing, The Rocky Horror Picture Show, and other cult classics.