The best plays and musicals in London (and beyond) to book in 2026
The best plays and musicals in London (and beyond) to book in 2026
Dominic CavendishFri, May 8, 2026 at 6:30 PM UTC
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Power couple of Victorian theatre: Ralph Fiennes and Miranda Raison in Grace Pervades - PA
An all-singing, all-dancing Paddington Bear continues to dazzle the West End in an irresistible family-friendly musical of his own, while Rosamund Pike casts a spell as a Crown Court judge in Inter Alia . Plus, the year promises some thrilling new theatrical prospects, including Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? with Gillian Anderson.
In this article, we direct you both to ongoing shows which our critics have placed among the best of the past year and the hottest tickets for the months ahead. We also highlight the crème de la crème of the West End’s long-running productions, from Operation Mincemeat to Oliver!
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The best new London shows
The best West End classics
The best shows to see outside of London
The best theatre on right now, at a glance -
Best play – The Price
Best family show – Oliver!
Best immersive theatre – Cabaret
Best funny show – Operation Mincemeat
Best musical – Paddington
The best new shows in LondonGrace Pervades
Love letter to theatre: Miranda Raison and Ralph Fiennes in Grace Pervades - Marc Brenner
Henry Irving (1838–1905) and Ellen Terry (1847–1928) were the power couple of Victorian theatre, entertaining audiences at the Lyceum for more than two decades, with Shakespeare a speciality. Grace Pervades, David Hare’s genteel homage to them, and to the changing face of theatre itself, elicits a delightful double-act from Ralph Fiennes and Miranda Raison; he the model of distinguished propriety, she the radiant antidote.
Theatre Royal Haymarket
Booking until: July 11 (including matinee performances on Thursdays and Saturdays)
Book ticketsvia Tickets | Telegraph Media Group provided by London Theatre Direct
The Price
Bang on the money: Henry Goodman and Eliot Cowan in The Price - Alastair Muir
Although its 1968 premiere had mixed reviews, Arthur Miller’sThe Price is now rightly regarded as one of his masterpieces, bang on the money about how our lives are shaped and how we take stock of them. It’s a bonanza for actors, too, especially the pivotal role of the old Jewish antiques dealer called in to evaluate the contents of a cluttered New York attic and dragged into a fraternal feud as to who is owed what. David Suchet excelled in the part in the West End in 2019. Now Henry Goodman does so too, in a beautifully judged production at Marylebone Theatre.
Marylebone Theatre
Booking until: June 7
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Avenue Q
‘Sesame Street for adults’: Avenue Q is back in the West End - Matt Crockett
Twenty years ago, the bonkers-yet-ingenious “Sesame Street for adults” musical Avenue Q romped into the West End, juxtaposing cute puppets with jaw-dropping comic songs like Everyone’s a Little Bit Racist and, unforgettably, a rampant sex scene. This jubilant anniversary revival at London’s Shaftesbury Theatre has a few contemporary updates – added references to Netflix, AI and OnlyFans – but, happily, doesn’t sacrifice one ounce of the show’s gleefully outrageous humour.
Shaftesbury Theatre
Booking until: Aug 29 (including matinee performances on Thursdays and Saturdays)
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One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest
First published as a novel in 1962, adapted for Broadway (by Dale Wasserman) a year later and immortalised in the Oscar-winning 1975 film, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest is back on the London stage for the first time in 20 years – with a twist. In Clint Dyer’s innovative staging, Ken Kesey’s mutinous asylum inmates are primarily African-American, a shift that ties the oppressions of Western psychiatry to the racism of the Civil Rights era. Rising star Aaron Pierre has a tattooed, twitchy allure as hell-raising jailbird Randle P McMurphy, even if he cannot match the firecracker charisma that Jack Nicholson brought to the screen. The cast also includes an icy Olivia Williams, as hatchet-faced Nurse Ratched, and Giles Terera as the enjoyably prissy inmate Dale Harding.
The Old Vic
Booking until: May 23 (including matinee performances on Wednesdays and Saturdays)
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Inter Alia
Rosamund Pike reprises her shape-shifting performance (first seen at the National) as Jessica Parks, a high-powered Crown Court judge whose desire to see better outcomes for female sexual assault victims collides with catastrophe when her own 18-year-old son stands accused of rape. Suzie Miller’s follow-up to her huge hit Prima Facie is again directed by Justin Martin, and while not in the same league, it has still caused a stir, addressing one of the topics du jour: “toxic masculinity”. Jamie Glover and Jasper Talbot co-star.
Wyndham’s Theatre
Booking until: Jun 20 (including matinee performances on Thursdays and Saturdays)
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Romeo & Juliet
Sadie Sink and Noah Jupe in Romeo and Juliet - Manuel Harlan
Robert Icke’s revival of Shakespeare’s most poetic, feverish tragedy has attracted sniggers for alerting audiences to its themes of grief, revenge and violence. The only thing this production needs to warn you about, however, is Sadie Sink’s performance, which almost made me cry. With Noah Jupe (of Hamnet fame) and Sink, of Stranger Things, in the title roles, Icke’s production undeniably plays to its youthful star-dusted cast. Sink is so commanding she makes this Juliet’s story much more than it is Romeo’s.
Harold Pinter Theatre
Booking until: June 6 (including matinee performances on Wednesdays and Saturdays)
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Dracula
Cynthia Erivo’s Dracula raises the stakes for British theatre - Daniel Boud
A global star of the big screen after playing Elphaba in the Wicked films, Cynthia Erivo now gives fans the chance to see her in the flesh, showcasing her talents in a new stage adaptation of Bram Stoker’s 1897 vampire classic Dracula. This hip, radical version plays to her strengths on camera and on stage, using head-turning live-capture wizardry. Incarnating 23 characters in one marathon solo performance, the British actress proves any doubters wrong: this isn’t a flawless night but it’s a tour de force even so.
Noël Coward Theatre
Booking until: May 30 (matinee performances vary)
Book ticketsvia Tickets | Telegraph Media Group provided by London Theatre Direct
Oh, Mary!
Dino Fetscher as Mary’s teacher and Mason Alexander Park as Mary Todd Lincoln - Manuel Harlan
Oh, Mary! is the show London didn’t know it needed. Cole Escola’s comedy about Mary Todd Lincoln – which has been playing on Broadway since June 2024, smashing box-office records and winning two Tony awards – has proven a hit in the West End. Again directed by Sam Pinkleton, this knowingly bogus portrait of the First Lady as a dipsomaniac and frustrated cabaret star is a riot, laced with a truth about the necessity of self-expression. Catherine Tate has taken over from American actor Mason Alexander Park in the funniest role in town.
Trafalgar Theatre
Booking until: July 18 (including matinee performances on Saturdays and additional 17:30 performances on Thursdays)
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Into The Woods
Into the Woods involves a folk-tale mash-up - Johan Persson
London was set to get a big revival of the late Stephen Sondheim’s fairytale musical in 2022. But Terry Gilliam’s production was daftly scrapped by the Old Vic after a woke in-house mutiny (reportedly prompted by remarks the director had made in interviews), and ended up being staged in Bath instead. The honour now falls to another American director, Olivier Award-winner Jordan Fein, whose beautiful production for the Bridge Theatre is an unalloyed delight.
Bridge Theatre
Booking until: May 30 (including matinee performances on Thursdays and Saturdays). A West End transfer (at the Noël Coward Theatre) will follow from September 22.
Book ticketsvia Tickets | Telegraph Media Group provided by London Theatre Direct
Paddington: The Musical
Paddington the Musical looks set to run and run - Johan Persson
London has a new tourist attraction: at the Savoy, Paddington Bear has been brought to life in a funny, feel-good, family-friendly musical that looks set to run and run. The music and lyrics by Tom Fletcher (of boy band McFly) may not be game-changing, but the pure novelty value is off the charts: see the little visitor from Darkest Peru sing, dance (after a modest fashion) and bumble for Britain! Children will love him and adults will warm to his restorative sweetness.
Savoy Theatre
Booking until:Feb 2028 (including matinee performances on Thursdays and Saturdays)
Book ticketsvia Tickets | Telegraph Media Group provided by London Theatre Direct
Coming upBeetlejuice: The Musical
Based on Tim Burton’s beloved 1988 movie, this musical comedy tells the tale of Lydia Deetz, a teenager who shares her house with the ghosts of a dead couple and the demonic prankster Beetlejuice. With book by Scott Brown and Anthony King and music and lyrics by Eddie Perfect, Broadway critics found it exhausting but inventive. Now getting its UK premiere, let’s see how the gothic funhouse is received here.
Prince Edward Theatre
Booking: May 21- April 17 2027 (including matinee performances on Fridays and Saturdays)
Book ticketsvia Tickets | Telegraph Media Group provided by London Theatre Direct
Cyrano de Bergerac
Adrian Lester reprises his celebrated performance as Cyrano de Bergerac
Following its acclaimed RSC Stratford run, Simon Evans’s thrilling version (co-adapted with Debris Stevenson) of Edmond Rostand’s 1898 tragicomedy of unrequited love moves to the West End. Adrian Lester reprises his celebrated performance as the poetically gifted, large-nosed hero. Adorned with a protrusive snout, this charismatic actor – making his RSC debut – lends the stirring, thought-provoking evening swash-buckling star quality, alongside Susannah Fielding as Roxane.
Noël Coward Theatre
Booking: Jun 13-Sept 5
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The Misanthrope
Sandra Oh (Killing Eve) makes her National debut in a gender-flipped reading of Molière’s 1666 comedy of scathing anti-sociability. Oh plays Alice, a leading novelist who despises modern mantras of kindness and respect, speaking out against fashionable ideas and lending her voice to frowned-on causes. Written in contemporary verse, Martin Crimp’s version explores the price a female artist must pay for speaking her mind. Paul Chahidi and Abigail Cruttenden have already been cast too, while NT boss Indhu Rubasingham directs.
National’s Lyttelton Theatre
Booking: Jun 16-Aug 1
Tickets:nationaltheatre.org.uk
Jesus Christ Superstar
Six performers will share the role of King Herod
Eurovision chart-topper Sam Ryder makes his West End debut as Jesus in Tim Rice and Andrew Lloyd Webber’s breakthrough 1971 musical about Christ’s final days. Tim Sheader’s dynamic, Olivier-winning production – first seen at the Open Air theatre, Regent’s Park in 2016 – comes to Lloyd Webber’s Palladium for an 11-week season. Six performers will share the role of King Herod across the summer run: Simon Russell Beale, Jesse Tyler Ferguson, Boy George, Layton Williams, Richard Armitage and Julian Clary.
London Palladium
Booking: Jun 20-Sept 5
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Equus
Toby Stephens leads this major revival of Peter Shaffer’s 1973 masterpiece. Stephens stars as psychiatrist Martin Dysart, who delves into the psyche of 17-year-old Alan Strang to understand what has prompted the boy to blind six horses. Shaffer’s award-winning play remains a defining exploration of passion, psychological damage and religious ecstasy. A co-production with Theatre Royal Bath.
Menier Chocolate Factory, May 8-Jun 27; Theatre Royal Bath: Jul 13-25
Book ticketsvia Tickets | Telegraph Media Group provided by London Theatre Direct
Trainspotting The Musical
Robbie Scott as Renton in Trainspotting The Musical
Thirty years after the film that defined the era, Irvine Welsh’s phenomenal best-seller about young Edinburgh junkies has become a British musical. Welsh adapts his own work, directed by Caroline Jay Ranger, bringing back Renton, Sick Boy, Begbie, Spud, Tommy et al alongside an ensemble cast and live band. Featuring tracks from the film soundtrack plus original numbers (music and lyrics by Stephen McGuinness and Welsh), Welsh promises “a bigger, loudly beating human heart than either the book or the film”.
Theatre Royal Haymarket
Booking: Jul 15- Sept 5
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Man to Man
Shout in the dark: Tilda Swinton returns to the stage in Man to Man
Tilda Swinton will tread the boards for the first time in more than 30 years in Manfred Karge’s one-woman play, portraying a widow who has to disguise herself as her late husband to survive 1930s Germany. (Swinton originated the role in its 1988 UK premiere.) It sold out quickly but check the website nearer the time for returns. And have a look at the rest of the Royal Court’s 70th anniversary season: it’s very good – featuring Gary Oldman in Krapp’s Last Tape, the much-anticipated Broadway transfer of John Proctor is the Villain (which is a revisionist take on Miller’s The Crucible) and the latest play from Ryan Calais Cameron.
Royal Court Theatre
Booking: Sept 5-Oct 24
Tickets: royalcourttheatre.com
Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?
Gillian Anderson and Billy Crudup lead a new production of Edward Albee’s defining 1962 modern masterpiece, staged by Marianne Elliott in the round. In the early hours on an American college campus, Martha and her husband George host new professor Nick (Josh Dylan) and his wife Honey (Phoebe Horn) for after-party drinks and verbal violence. As the booze flows, the young couple are drawn into George and Martha’s toxic games, a prelude to devastating truth-telling. Anderson – who scored a huge hit in London playing A Streetcar Named Desire’s Blanche DuBois in 2014 – has wanted to play Martha for decades, describing her as “ferocious, volatile, and impossible to contain”. Crudup (Harry Clarke, High Noon) is becoming a much-loved regular here.
@sohoplace
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Booking: Sep 21-Dec 19
Tickets:sohoplace.org
The best West End classicsCabaret
Hannah Dodd as Sally Bowles in Cabaret - Marc Brenner
Rebecca Frecknall’s production of Cabaret became a kill-for-a-ticket theatrical triumph when it launched in 2021 with Eddie Redmayne and Jessie Buckley in the lead roles. The cast has changed multiple times since then but this revival is as electrifying as ever. It affirms the sensuous joy of performance and re-asserts the ability of Kander and Ebb’s 1966 classic, set in Weimar Germany amid the spectres of rising fascism, to send shivers down the spine. Never mind “Willkommen, bienvenue, welcome”. I’d say, dig like your life depended on it into your pockets.
Kit Kat Club at the Playhouse Theatre
Booking until: Sept 26 (including matinee performances on Wednesdays and Saturdays)
Book ticketsvia Tickets | Telegraph Media Group provided by London Theatre Direct
Hamilton
Hamilton: The most talked-about musical of the century
Lin-Manuel Miranda’s show is the most talked-about musical of the century – and for good reason. As much as it offers an alternately witty and stirring history lesson, charting the bullet-fast rise of founding father Alexander Hamilton (c1755 to 1804) and his demise from a duelling shot, it maps out the emergence of the global order we have so come to depend on. Miranda does things with rap so nifty that even people who hate rap will relent. Believe every single word of the hype.
Victoria Palace Theatre
Booking until: Oct 3 (including matinee performances on Thursdays and Saturdays)
Book ticketsvia Tickets | Telegraph Media Group provided by London Theatre Direct
Hercules
Hercules the musical: a triumphant version of Disney’s 1997 riff on the myth - Matt Crockett
Disney stage adaptations tend to be conceived with a ruthless eye on the film’s pre-existing fanbase. Not so this theatrical version of the 1997 animated riff on the Hercules myth, which is pointedly – and triumphantly – aimed at families with young children rather than the original’s numerous disciples. Adaptors Kwame Kwei-Armah, the Young Vic’s former artistic director, and Tony award-winning script writer Robert Horn may have made a few transgressive changes, but the fleet-footed result has retained the original’s goofy knockabout humour and refusal to take itself seriously.
Theatre Royal Drury Lane
Booking until: July 18 (including matinee performances on Thursdays and Saturdays)
Book ticketsvia Tickets | Telegraph Media Group provided by London Theatre Direct
Les Misérables
Les Misérables at the Sondheim Theatre - Johan Persson
Some 40 years after it received its premiere (critics, sniffy at the time, have been forced to eat humble pie ever since), Les Misérables is not only the longest-running musical in the West End but is still one of the hottest tickets in town. Old-fashioned though this take on Victor Hugo’s sprawling 1862 epic may seem in its mixture of high-powered ideas and gut-wrenching emotions, it’s a show that feels lastingly revolutionary. It represents what theatre should be.
Sondheim Theatre
Booking until: Oct 3 (including matinee performances on Thursdays and Saturdays)
Book ticketsvia Tickets | Telegraph Media Group provided by London Theatre Direct
My Neighbour Totoro
My Neighbour Totoro: The stage adaptation of Studio Ghibli’s 1988 animated feature - Manuel Harlan
This stage adaptation of the 1988 animated feature My Neighbour Totoro was a monster smash for the RSC even before it started previews. Hayao Miyazaki’s tale follows Satsuki and Mei, the daughters (aged 10 and four) of a university professor, Tatsuo. What fans loved about the film has been beautifully served here. The Gruffalo-like Totoro, who is befriended by the tiny but indomitable Mei, is magnificently humongous and the wow-factor of his spectacular appearances is worth the price of admission alone.
Gillian Lynne Theatre
Booking until: Aug 30 (including matinee performances on Thursdays and Saturdays)
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Oliver!
Oliver! is back after a 14-year absence - Johan Persson
After a 14-year absence, it’s clear that the West End and Oliver! are getting along all over again; booking for Cameron Mackintosh and Matthew Bourne’s rousing, irresistible revival has now been extended to March 2026. For all its Dickensian gloom, Lionel Bart’s musical is so fundamentally ebullient it’s like bottled joy: guaranteed to put a spring in your step. Form an orderly queue and prepare to receive saving dollops of theatrical delight.
Gielgud Theatre
Booking until: Oct 3 (including matinee performances on Wednesdays and Saturdays)
Book ticketsvia Tickets | Telegraph Media Group provided by London Theatre Direct
Operation Mincemeat
Operation Mincemeat: ‘An inventive gem of a musical’ - Matt Crockett
Based on one of the Allies’ most startling counter-intelligence ruses of the entire Second World War, this inventive gem of a musical is a delight. The operation involved a dead body being planted with fake documents so that the Germans would think the Allies were planning on invading Sardinia instead of Sicily. What the show has in winning spades is a Pythonesque delight in irreverence that doesn’t short-change the intellect, delineating the journeys each character goes on, the social transformation the war engendered, and the pathos attending the macabre plot.
Fortune Theatre
Booking until: Sept 26 (including matinee performances on Tuesdays and Saturdays)
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The Phantom of the Opera
Killian Donnelly and Lucy St Louis in The Phantom of the Opera - Johan Persson
Like any indestructible artwork, The Phantom of the Opera plugs into myth. From Caliban to Quasimodo to Frankenstein’s monster, the shunned repulsive figure with beauty on the inside has always been able to reach out and yank at our heartstrings. Andrew Lloyd Webber’s sumptuous tunes, so too does this Phantom. Lloyd Webber’s epic tearjerker, which reopened at Her Majesty’s Theatre in 2021, has to be seen in all its kitsch, gothic glory.
His Majesty’s Theatre
Booking until: Oct 3 (including matinee performances on Wednesdays and Saturdays)
Book ticketsvia Tickets | Telegraph Media Group provided by London Theatre Direct
Six
Six the Musical - Pamela Raith
Composers Toby Marlow and Lucy Moss completed their witty, magpie-minded sonic onslaught about Henry VIII’s six wives while in their final year at Cambridge (2016-17); it has since become a theatrical phenomenon and they deserve the riches, opportunities and acclaim that have come their way. Six is a marvellous show, dripping with invention and intelligence, and one which brings not just happiness in the moment but hope for the future of the British musical.
Vaudeville Theatre
Booking until: Jan 31, 2027 (including matinee performances on Thursdays, Saturdays and Sundays)
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Stranger Things: The First Shadow
Stranger Things: The First Shadow is a successful spin-off to Netflix’s phenomenal sci-fi series - Manuel Harlan
This stage spin-off to Netflix’s phenomenal sci-fi series provides a much-needed shot in the arm for the West End – and a fillip for fans left bereft by the conclusion of the drama on the small screen. With key input from Stranger Things creators the Duffer Brothers, the Fifties-set prequel manages to match the series’ mind-blowing nature. The main storyline takes us to Hawkins when trouble started brewing, in 1959; sleuthing high-school youths Jim Hopper and Joyce Maldonado (known to fans from their older incarnations in the series played by David Harbour and Winona Ryder) investigate the mysterious violent death of pets, and fumble their way towards the real culprit. It’s barely possible to spoil the impact of this show which operates at a frequency that fizzes synapses and makes you feel you’ve entered a shadowy, dreamy realm.
Phoenix Theatre
Booking until: May 31 (including matinee performances on Fridays and Saturdays)
Book ticketsvia Tickets | Telegraph Media Group provided by London Theatre Direct
The best shows to see outside LondonFourteen Again
Sally Ann Triplett’s social-worker Peggy offers acidly jovial observations - PAMELA RAITH
Fourteen Again, one of Victoria Wood’s most poignant ditties, provides the title and time-travelling theme of a wry, wistful new musical based on her song-book, marking 10 years since her death. Peggy, the show’s mid-life northern heroine, gets whizzed back to her fondly recalled school days. There’s a whiff of Back to the Future (not to mention Peggy Sue Got Married). But it’s also back to basics: two lead actresses, an actor and a piano – a likely throwback to Wood’s early years, when her pal Julie Walters and her husband/director, Geoffrey Durham, were her showbiz anchors.
Victoria Wood Theatre, Bowness-on-Windermere
Booking until: June 6
Tickets: victoriawoodtheatre.com
The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui
Star turn: Mark Gatiss is hypnotic as Machiavel - Marc Brenner
Mark Gatiss continues to evolve from small-screen darling to theatrical heavyweight with a hypnotic star-turn in The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui. Gatiss – who won an Olivier award in 2024 for his performance as John Gielgud in The Motive and the Cue – is skin-crawling as the ruthless Machiavel in Bertolt Brecht’s cartoonish satire on Hitler’s ascendancy, which has Chicagoan mobsters in place of cut-throat Nazis. Even so, in a world now beset by dictators, it feels a bit late for timely warnings from history.
Swan Theatre, Stratford-upon-Avon
Booking until: May 30
Tickets:rsc.org.uk
The High Life
The sitcom’s core original cast, including Alan Cumming and Forbes Masson, star in the production - Tommy Ga-Ken Wan
This new musical is based upon the mid-1990s BBC sitcom The High Life, which was set amongst the staff of a fictional Scottish airline. Starring the core original cast – namely, Alan Cumming, Forbes Masson, Siobhan Redmond and Patrick Ryecart – it is delightfully uproarious. This is also Cumming’s first notable public appearance since his stint in February presenting the most controversial Bafta ceremony of recent years, when the BBC failed to edit a racial slur out of the live broadcast. That moment gets a topical sideswipe here when Cumming says he was left without “a f---ing clue” what was going on during the evening.
Touring Scotland
Booking until: May 23
Tickets:nationaltheatrescotland.com
The Constant Wife
Taking the chair: Kara Tointon takes the lead in The Constant Wife
The RSC’s recent revival of Somerset Maugham’s 1926 comedy of ill manners goes on tour, with Kara Tointon replacing Game of Thrones’s Rose Leslie in the lead role. When Constance discovers her Harley Street doctor husband is having an affair, she stands by him – the better to forge a different life. The play, which has been rejigged by Laura Wade, lightly asks big questions about relationships and empowerment, with new layers of knowingness and pain brought to Maugham’s droll, Wildean dialogue. Directed by Tamara Harvey.
Touring to Blackpool, Chichester, York and more
Booking until: May 16 (matinee performances vary)
Tickets:rsc.org.uk
The Tempest
Homecoming: Kenneth Branagh returns to the RSC in The Tempest - Seamus Ryan
The RSC welcomes Kenneth Branagh back after 33 years to play Prospero in Shakespeare’s elegiac late play, directed by Richard Eyre. A big moment for Branagh, and hopefully the company: it’s the place that made him, when he burst upon the scene as Henry V at the age of 23. Since then, he has worked on some 35 Shakespeare productions. There is something poignant about this homecoming which will surely feed into his performance as the spell-casting castaway who must face change. (He’ll also play Lopakhin in The Cherry Orchard, running from July).
Royal Shakespeare Theatre, Stratford-upon-Avon
Booking: May 13-June 20 (including matinee performances on Thursdays and Saturdays)
Tickets:rsc.org.uk
Atonement
Ian McEwan’s novel Atonement is receiving its first stage adaptation
Ian McEwan’s 2001 novel receives its world premiere stage adaptation, directed by Adam Penford. On a blazing English country estate in the summer of 1935, 13-year-old Briony Tallis witnesses a passionate scene between her sister Cecilia and their housekeeper’s son, Robbie – and will go on to make an accusation that will fatally alter their lives. Stretching from the 1930s past the Second World War to the present-day, this version comes courtesy of Christopher Hampton, who wrote the 2007 film adaptation with Keira Knightley and James McAvoy and whose theatrical hits include Les Liaisons Dangereuses and The Philanthropist.
Festival Theatre, Chichester
Booking: May 29-Jun 20
Tickets:cft.org.uk
Game of Thrones: The Mad King
George RR Martin’s epic fantasy world comes to the RSC in this surefire blockbuster adaptation, directed by Dominic Cooke. Set a decade before the events of the novels, Duncan Macmillan’s prequel unfolds at a decisive jousting tournament in the castle of Harrenhal as spring arrives. Lovers meet, revellers celebrate, and a plot against the Mad King brews. Witness the events that shaped Westeros! Martin has called the RSC “the obvious choice” for the spin-off premiere, citing Shakespeare’s influence on his work.
Royal Shakespeare Theatre, Stratford-upon-Avon
Booking: summer 2026 dates tbc, public booking from April 24
Tickets:rsc.org.uk
The Silence of the Lambs
The Silence of the Lambs receives its world stage premiere
Hannibal Lecter was named the greatest villain in American cinema thanks to Anthony Hopkins’s chilling performance in the 1991 film. Now, Gina Gionfriddo adapts Thomas Harris’s multi-million-selling novel for its world stage premiere. When FBI trainee Clarice Starling is sent to interview a cannibalistic murderer, it’s hoped that his brilliant mind will help her to catch a sadistic new serial-killer, Buffalo Bill. But there’s nothing straightforward about Lecter, as we know. Casting tbc.
Curve, Leicester, Aug 1-15, then touring the UK and Ireland
Tickets:silenceofthelambsplay.com
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