London Theatre Week: What's On and How to Pick a Show: 212 events this week (14 Sept to 15 Sept)

London theatre week isn't one fixed event on a calendar. It's shorthand for a run of shows across the West End and beyond, often timed around discount pushes, but the real trick is knowing how to read what's on any given week rather than waiting for a label.

The West End clusters around Shaftesbury Avenue, Covent Garden and the Strand, and that's where most big musicals and long-running commercial shows sit. Walk five minutes further out and you hit a different scene: the Donmar, the Bridge near Tower Bridge, the Almeida in Islington, all doing sharper, smaller-scale work with less queueing and better sightlines for the price.

How to pick: decide first whether you want spectacle or story. Big musicals reward a good seat and a bit of spend. Studio theatres and fringe rooms in Camden, Peckham or Dalston reward turning up open-minded, since the bill changes fast and word of mouth travels faster than any listing page.

Timing matters more than people admit. Evening performances run late, so factor in the last Tube or a taxi home if you're coming from further out. Matinees exist and tend to draw a different, calmer crowd, useful if you want to avoid a packed bar at the interval.

Price ranges widely by seat, day and how far ahead you book, so treat any figure you see as a starting point rather than the full picture. Day-of returns and standing tickets are the classic way locals stretch a theatre habit further than the sticker price suggests.