New London shows opening in 2027

West End, venue to be announced · Play

Quentin Tarantino directs for the stage for the first time, with Sacha Baron Cohen leading a swashbuckling comedy set in 1830s Europe.

Tarantino has written and directed films for thirty years, from Pulp Fiction to Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, and this is the first time that dialogue will be spoken live rather than shot. Sacha Baron Cohen, best known for Borat and Ali G, takes the lead. Sonia Friedman produces with Sony Pictures Entertainment; her productions include Harry Potter and the Cursed Child and Leopoldstadt. What has not been announced is almost everything practical: no venue, no dates, no on-sale, and no other casting.

London Coliseum · Musical

Michael Ball plays Willy Wonka in a new staging of the Roald Dahl story, opening on 20 June for a summer run.

This is a new staging rather than a revival of the 2013 Drury Lane production, and it makes one notable change: three songs from the 1971 film, including Pure Imagination, join the Marc Shaiman and Scott Wittman stage score. Nikolai Foster, artistic director of Curve in Leicester, directs. Michael Ball has an Olivier for Hairspray and first played the West End in Les Miserables, so Wonka sits in a long line of larger-than-life roles for him. The Coliseum is the largest theatre in London at around 2,350 seats, which usually means a wider spread of prices than a West End house can manage.

London, venue to be announced · Play

The George R. R. Martin prequel transfers to London after a sold-out run at the RSC in Stratford.

Duncan Macmillan, who adapted 1984 and wrote People, Places and Things, has written it, and Dominic Cooke directs, having run the Royal Court for six years before directing Follies at the National. The Stratford run sold out and closed on 5 September 2026. The London venue and dates have not been announced.

National Theatre (Lyttelton) · Play

Paul Mescal and Tracy Letts lead Rebecca Frecknall’s revival of the Arthur Miller, with Monica Dolan and Ciarán Hinds.

Miller’s 1949 play, which won the Pulitzer, follows Willy Loman in the days when the work and the family story he has told himself both give way. Rebecca Frecknall directs, after A Streetcar Named Desire at the Almeida and the Kit Kat Club Cabaret, and she directed Mescal in that Streetcar. Around him are Tracy Letts, Monica Dolan and Ciarán Hinds. There is a neat crossing in the casting: Letts wrote August: Osage County, which opens at the Noel Coward in January, so he is on a London stage and on a London playbill in the same season.

West End, venue to be announced · Play

James Norton plays Hamlet in Thomas Ostermeier’s production, staged in English for the first time.

Thomas Ostermeier has toured this Hamlet from the Schaubühne in Berlin since 2008, always in German; this is the first time it will be played in English. James Norton, of Happy Valley and McMafia, last appeared in the West End in A Little Life. Wessex Grove and Gavin Kalin Productions produce. No venue or dates have been announced.

National Theatre (Olivier) · Musical

Marianne Elliott and Miranda Cromwell co-direct the Bernstein and Sondheim musical in the Olivier.

The 1957 musical, with Leonard Bernstein’s score and Stephen Sondheim’s first Broadway lyrics, is being staged with Jerome Robbins’ original choreography reproduced rather than replaced — so the dancing is the one people know. Marianne Elliott directed War Horse, The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time and Angels in America at the National; Miranda Cromwell co-directed Death of a Salesman with her, which makes this a reunion in the same building where the National is also staging that play. The Olivier seats around 1,100. Dates have not been published.

London, venue to be announced · Musical

A new musical of the films, with book and lyrics co-written by Emma Thompson.

Emma Thompson wrote both films and played the title role; here she co-writes the book and lyrics. Music is by Gary Clark, and the staging team is a strong one for family work: Katy Rudd directed The Ocean at the End of the Lane at the National, and Rob Howell designed Matilda the Musical. The films come from Christianna Brand’s Nurse Matilda books. It is a world premiere, so there is no previous production or cast recording to judge it by, and no venue or dates have been announced.

National Theatre (Olivier) · Play

Emma Corrin and Harriet Walter star in Michael Grandage’s Tennessee Williams revival.

Williams’ 1958 one-act, in which a wealthy woman tries to control the account of how her son died. Part of the National’s 2027 season; dates to be announced.

National Theatre (Lyttelton) · Play

Emilia Clarke makes her National Theatre debut in David Hare’s play, directed by Richard Eyre.

Hare’s 1978 play follows a woman across twenty years, from wartime France into a peace she cannot settle into. Dates to be announced.

National Theatre (Olivier) · Play

A new James Graham play about John Major’s rise to Prime Minister, directed by Jeremy Herrin.

Graham also wrote Dear England, This House and Ink, all of which began in subsidised theatres and later transferred. A world premiere; dates to be announced.

National Theatre (Lyttelton) · Play

Natasha Gordon adapts Bernardine Evaristo’s novel, with Gary Beadle, Jo Martin and Danny Sapani.

Evaristo’s novel follows a seventy-four-year-old Antiguan Londoner who has hidden his relationship with another man for decades. Gordon wrote Nine Night, which plays the National this autumn.

National Theatre · Entertainment

Punchdrunk make a site-specific show for the fiftieth anniversary of the National’s South Bank building.

Felix Barrett directs, working with Lucy Kirkwood. Punchdrunk productions are immersive and promenade rather than seated, so the usual seating and pricing do not apply. Dates to be announced.

The Greatest Showman

Theatre Royal Drury Lane · Musical

Welcome to The Greatest Showman, where the ordinary is left behind and dreamers, outsiders, and trailblazers take centre stage. A restless maverick refuses the life everyone expects of him, determined to build the greatest show on earth by bringing together the people the world tried to ignore.