What's On
Highgate Festival
Extracts from
The Lost Girls of Highgate Cemetery
Saturday 20 June at 3.30 pm
In the gardens of Hillcrest Estate, Off North Road, Highgate N6 4HH
Theatre in the Square have connected with the Residents’ Association at Hillcrest, the estate off North Road where the Highgate Penitentiary stood – home to the Lost Girls and many other young women in need of support and shelter. As part of the Highgate Festival, we have been invited to perform short extracts from the play outside in the beautiful grounds.
Meet at 3.30pm Outside the Wrestlers Pub to then walk together to the Event; start time at 3.45pm. Then join cast and crew for a Q&A back at the Wrestlers after the event .
The Lost Girls of Highgate Cemetery
A moving and thought-provoking play devised
and performed by the company.
Wednesday 1 to Friday 3 July at 7.30 pm
Saturday 4 July at 6.00 pm
Highgate Cemetery in the Chapel Courtyard
Ten “fallen women”, the youngest only fourteen years old, lay nameless and forgotten in an unmarked grave in Highgate Cemetery’s West side for over a century. That is, until relatively recently.
Drawing on research, contemporaneous accounts and imagination, we tell the stories of these “Lost Girls”. What was daily life like in “The House of Mercy”, Highgate’s strict penitentiary for fallen women? Christina Rossetti served as a volunteer at the House: could these girls’ stories have been the inspiration for some of her poetry? Were they prostitutes, sinners and hopeless cases, or were they ordinary girls, with teenage hopes and dreams, before hardship befell them? What led them to an ignominious end in a largely forgotten plot of the cemetery? This play reveals compelling lives, tragically cut short by poverty and illness. The girls may be lost to time, but they will now be honoured and not forgotten.
Tickets available now. 
The Misanthrope
By Roger McGough
after Molière
9-12 December 2026
Venue: to be confirmed.
Much to the horror of his friend, Philinte, Alceste rejects the social conventions of the time which makes him tremendously unpopular. He laments his isolation in a world he sees as superficial and base. But he cannot help but love the playful Célimène, a consummate flirt whose wit and frivolity epitomize the manners that he despises. She refuses to change, charging Alceste with being unfit for society because he hates humanity. However, he does have other women pining for him, particularly the prudish Arsinoé and the honest Éliante. When Alceste insults a sonnet written by the powerful noble Oronte, he is called to stand trial. Refusing to dole out false compliments, he is charged and humiliated and resolves on self-imposed exile. Arsinoé, in trying to win his affection, shows him a love letter Célimène wrote to another suitor. He discovers that Célimène has been leading him on. She has written identical love letters to numerous suitors and broken her vow to favour him above all others. He gives her an ultimatum: he will forgive her and marry her if she runs away with him to exile. Célimène refuses, believing herself too young and beautiful to leave society and all her suitors behind. His best friend, Philinte, becomes betrothed to Éliante. Alceste then decides to exile himself from society.
Tickets available in October 2026
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Last updated:1 June 2026