A Look Ahead At London’s West End In 2026: Cynthia Erivo, Josh O’Connor, Tilda Swinton & Gary Oldman Among Stars Returning To The Theater

More and more screen stars will return to their theatrical roots in 2026 to give their stage muscles a workout. Wicked’s Cynthia Erivo is back after a 12-year absence to the West End, as Deadline was first to report, to play all 23 roles in a bloodthirsty version of Dracula. Josh O’Connor, a lead in next year’s Steven Spielberg blockbuster Disclosure Day, will trace the downfall of a classical violinist who opts instead for a bruising life as a boxer in a rare revival of Clifford Odets’ Golden Boy.

So why do they do it? They’re both screen idols in demand and their agents have endless goodies lined up for them, yet they’d rather face the harsh glare of a follow spot.

Erivo & O’Connor

Both Erivo and O’Connor are legitimate creatures of the stage and both tell me they miss it. They also say that it terrifies them. “It’s like running towards the fire,” Erivo says. “I’m doing Dracula because it scares the sh*t out of me,” they add.

O’Connor says he wants to re-experience the danger of performing in front of a live audience where there’s “no safety net.” 

During a chat with him as he wraps on Spielberg’s picture, he chose the word that sums it all up: “It’s the fear. Actors love it.”

Erivo is now in London sinking her teeth into rehearsals with director Kip Williams for the 112 performances they will give at the Noel Coward Theatre over a 15-week season beginning February 4. Should they need to take a flight to attend awards shows across the pond, some dates have been blocked off.

The Tony winner and Oscar nominee was last on stage in the West End when they appeared with Harriet Walter in Phyllida Lloyd’s production of Henry IV, set in a prison, at the Donmar Warehouse in 2014. From there, Erivo headed to Broadway to play Celie in The Color Purple. They tell us that they’re using their own talon-like fingernails to play Bram Stoker’s vampire.

Their astonishing performance as Elphaba in Jon M. Chu’s two Wicked moves proves they have the stamina to command the stage of the Noel Coward, performing multiple roles. Erivo says they were convinced they could do it after seeing Sarah Snook play 26 different characters in The Picture of Dorian Gray on Broadway.

Both Dracula and Dorian Gray originated out of the Sydney Theatre Company and were directed by Williams. Producers Michael Cassel and Adam Kenwright are responsible for bringing them to London. Snook took The Picture of Dorian Gray to Broadway, and although no one’s saying so out loud, Dracula is likely going to rest in their sarcophagus and be transported to New York as well. 

Sam Yates, who directed Andrew Scott in Vanya at the Old Vic and in New York, will begin rehearsals with O’Connor and the Golden Boy company as soon as The Crown, Challengers and God’s Own Country star completes red carpet duties for Disclosure Day, which opens June 12. 

O’Connor, currently seen in Wake Up Dead Man: A Knives Out Mystery, The Mastermind and The History of Sound, also needs to get into prizefighting shape for Golden Boy, which runs at the Almeida from September 8-October 31. 

Swinton & Oldman

Elsewhere, Oscar-winning actors Tilda Swinton and Gary Oldman are both returning to their theatrical roots at the same address, the Royal Court in Sloane Square, to help celebrate its 70th anniversary.

The last time Swinton trod the boards was in Manfred Karger’s Man to Man for the play’s 1988 London premiere. It had transferred down from Edinburgh’s Traverse Theatre where it originated in 1987 with Swinton taking up the solo role of Ella Gericke, a German widow who, beginning in the 1930s, assumes the identity and work of Max, her deceased husband, to help her through years of tumultuous upheaval in her country. I saw her do it at the Royal Court and she was pretty remarkable; thrilling that Swinton has signed up to take the part on again with Man to Man‘s original creative team led by director Stephen Unwin.

I’m curious to see if Swinton’s reemergence on stage encourages her to perform more in the theater. Don’t want to boast, but I’m going to anyway — I saw her perform a variety of roles opposite the likes of Judi Dench and Peggy Mount in the Royal Shakespeare Company’s legendary 1982-85 seasons at Stratford-upon-Avon and the Barbican, in Mother Courage and Her Children (with Dench and Zoë Wanamaker) and Measure for Measure (with Mount, Daniel Massey and Juliet Stevenson playing Isabella). Swinton had small and large roles in other plays that performed in the repertory.

The very last time Swinton took a bow was in Unwin’s production of Peter Handke’s The Long Way Round at the National Theatre 35 years ago. Having seen it, I can understand why she stayed away so long!

Man to Man plays the Royal Court’s Jerwood Theatre Downstairs begins September 5. It will transfer to New York in spring 2027.

Slow Horses star Oldman precedes Swinton into the Jerwood Downstairs with Samuel Beckett’s Krapp’s Last Tape, which originated at the Royal Court in 1958. Oldman recently revived the one-man drama, in which he both starred in and directed, at York Theatre Royal last April and May.

Oldman performed in a series of plays at the Royal Court over a two-year period beginning in 1985, culminating in a breathtaking performance opposite Lesley Manville in Serious Money, Caryl Churchill’s ferocious takedown of high finance.

Krapp’s Last Tape runs from May 8.

Chris Pine

Chris Pine (Star Trek, Into the Woods) makes his London stage debut as Anton Chekhov’s angst-ridden Nikolai Ivanov in a new adaptation of Ivanov by Simon Stone running at the Bridge Theatre from July 4-September 19.

Some folk I know rolled their eyes when they heard about Pine’s casting to play a man undone by his own malaise. But Pine’s a classically trained thespian who studied at UC Berkeley and Leeds University before undertaking further acting courses at ACT in San Francisco. I feel we shouldn’t disdain American screen actors who come here to tread our boards with serious intent. Although it’s true that some, more homegrown than Americans, do venture from screen to stage and it’s clear they haven’t the chops for it, still they rake in the money at the box office in any old slop, and audiences leave disappointed because the star from the telly was a dud. Tis’ not the season to name names.  

Ivanov’s tricky to pull off so kudos to Pine for running towards the fire. By the way, my benchmark for Ivanov, gawd knows I’ve seen a few, is Ralph Fiennes who was luminous in a crackerjack production that Jonathan Kent directed at the Almeida in 1997 from a version by David Hare.

Ivanov plays the Bridge Theatre from July 4-September 19.

Tom Stoppard had already approved the casting for the Old Vic’s revival of his 1993 masterpiece Arcadia before he died late last month. Carrie Cracknell’s now in rehearsals with a company that includes Isis Hainsworth, Seamus Dillane, Prasanna Puwanarajah, Leila Fazad, Fiona Button, Holly Godliman, Angus Cooper, Gabriel Akuwudike and William Lawlor. The story is that of a child prodigy and theories of literary scandal and scientific intrigue that moves between two eras. 

Felicity Kendal, Bill Nighy, Harriet Walter, Samuel West and Emma Fielding were in the original company at the National that Trevor Nunn directed. What an opening night that was!  

Kendal, a Stoppard muse, can be seen currently in the playwright’s 1995 play Indian Ink directed by Jonathan Kent at Hampstead Theatre until January 31.

Meanwhile, Rosamund Pike (Gone Girl, The Wheel of Time) reprises her star turn in the transfer of Suzie Miller’s searing legal drama Inter Alia from the National, where it was a sold-out hit, to Wyndham’s Theatre from March 19-June 20.

Pike is joined by Jamie Glover, who played her husband in the NT production directed by Justin Martin. It’s about a karaoke-loving Old Bailey judge who finds herself at the center of an ethical conundrum involving her college-age son.

Miller’s other legal scorcher, Prima Facie, is going on tour. The one-woman drama, a soaraway success in London and on Broadway, saw Jodie Comer win Tony, Olivier, Evening Standard and all the silverware going for her portrait of an attorney who represents alleged sexual offenders and is herself raped. Play opens at Richmond Theatre, south west of London, on January 23 and then plays eight other dates from Dublin’s Gaiety Theatre to the Playhouse in Liverpool, wrapping there March 21.

Clint Dyer (Get Up, Stand Up!, Death of England Plays), the former National Theatre deputy artistic director and now an NT Artistic Associate, directs Aaron Pierre (The Morning Show, Lanterns, Rebel Ridge, The Underground Railroad) playing Randle P. McMurphy in the stage production of Ken Kesey’s One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest adapted by Dale Wasserman.

Olivier Award-winner Giles Terera (Hamilton, Rosmersholm, Othello), a frequent collaborator of Dyer’s, plays Dale Harding, the savviest patient in the psychiatric facility who initially locks horns with McMurphy. The play runs at the Old Vic from April 1-May 23. William Redfield (A New Leaf, Death Wish) played Harding in Milos Forman’s classic 1975 movie, and we all know Jack Nicholson took on McMurphy. 

I’m hearing of some cool casting ideas in the works for Nurse Ratched, who was played by Louise Fletcher in the film.

Dyer also directs Letitia Wright (Black Panther, Small Axe) in the UK premiere of Tracey Scott Wilson’s incendiary drama The Story, about a reporter who clashes with their editor (what’s new!) over a hot-button issue. Throw in some racism and journalistic ethics into the mix.  

Marianne Elliott directs a major-league revival of Christopher Hampton’s Les Liasons Dangereuses from Pierre Choderlos de Laclos’ epistolary novel starring Lesley Manville, Monica Barbaro and Aidan Turner at the National from March 21-June 6.

Also National Theatre bound is the musical adaptation of the 2014 movie Pride written by Stephen Beresford and directed by Matthew Warchus. They reunite for this new show, which has been developed by Warchus with Beresford writing the book and lyrics, with music by Christopher Nightingale, Josh Cohen and DJ Walde.   

Pride is inspired by the true tale of how a group known as “Lesbians and Gays Support the Miners” came to the aid of a Welsh pit village during the 1984 miner’s strike. The movie starred Ben Schnetzer, Andrew Scott, Imelda Staunton, Paddy Considine, Jessica Gunning, George MacKay, Dominic West, Monica Dolan and Liz White. 

The musical plays the National’s Dorfman Theatre from June 11-September 12. 

However, the keenest amongst you should scoot off to Cardiff’s Sherman Theatre for Pride’s outta town world premiere from March 31 through April 18.   

Happy Valley’s Siobhan Finneran stars in J.B. Priestley’s great farce When We Are Married, which is on now at the Donmar Warehouse, directed by Tim Sheader, until February 7. Finnegan’s joined by Samantha Spiro, Sophie Thompson, Tori Allen-Martin, Leo Wringer and Ron Cook.

The best ever production of When We Are Married starred Patricia Routledge, Timothy West, Prunella Scales, Brian Murphy, Bill Fraser, Patsy Rowlands and Patricia Hayes at the old Whitehall Theatre (now the Trafalgar) in 1985. Watching them was pure comedy gold.

Following Finneran and company into the Donmar from February 14 is Anastasia Hille (The Bletchley Circle, A Gentleman in Moscow) and Erin Kellyman (28 Years Later, The Falcon and the Winter Soldier) in the world premiere of Evening All Afternoon by Anna Ziegler (Photograph 51), about how a stepmother and her stepdaughter summon quiet courage “to open their hearts again.”

Chiwetel Ejiofor has been spotted at rehearsals in Clapham, South London for the Royal Shakespeare Company’s musical adaptation of The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind, based on Ejiofor’s 2019 Netflix movie about how schoolboy William Kamkwamba, then aged 13, saved his village in Malawi from famine by devising a windmill from scratch to provide electricity to pump water and irrigate crops.

Ejiofor has been appointed the show’s creative associate and is on hand should director Lynette Linton, the cast and creatives require any guidance related to the story. Kenny Wax, who holds the West End rights, tells me that the cast, with Alistair Nwachukwu as William, have been “raising the roof” over at the RSC’s London rehearsal hall. The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind opens at the RSC’s Swan Theatre in Stratford-upon-Avon on February 10 and runs through March 28. The show features book and lyrics by Richy Hughes and music and lyrics by Tim Sutton.

It then transfers to @sohoplace in the West End from April 25-July 18.

Nwachukwu was a member of the ensemble that performed in the excellent play The Line of Beauty, based on Alan Hollinghurst’s bestselling novel. It was directed by Michael Grandage and adapted by Jack Holden, who described it as a drama “about class and furniture.” Anyhow, there’s no word yet on when, where and casting, but it’s likely to transfer into the West End. Jasper Talbot, Leo Surer, Ellie Bamber, Arty Froushan, Charles Edwards, Claudia Harrison, Robert Portal and Francesca Amewudah-Rivers were at the top of their game when I caught the final Almeida performance.   

The aforementioned Froushan will headline, as we reported here recently, a revised revival of the musical version of Bret Easton Ellis’ notorious novel American Psycho directed again by Rupert Goold. Show features a book by Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa and music and lyrics by Duncan Sheik. It runs at the Almeida from January 22-March 14.  

More from the RSC: Kenneth Branagh returns to Stratford’s Royal Shakespeare Theatre to play Prospero in The Tempest, directed by Richard Eyre, with performances from May 13 through June 20.

Branagh also appears with Academy Award-winning Helen Hunt making her RSC debut as Ranyevskaya in Chekhov’s The Cherry Orchard directed by Tamara Harvey from a new version by Laura Wade. A limited season at The Swan Theatre runs July 10-August 29.

Mark Gatiss also debuts at the RSC in Bertolt Brecht’s The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui, in a version by Stephen Sharkey that’s directed by Seán Linnen, also at The Swan, from April 11 through May 30.

High Noon, adapted from the classic Western by Eric Roth, is in previews at the Harold Pinter Theatre with Billy Crudup and Denise Gough playing, and expanding, the roles played by Gary Cooper and Grace Kelly in Fred Zinnemann’s movie written by Carl Forman. Roth tells me it’s about “courage.”

Arthur Miller’s All My Sons is unmissable at Wyndham’s Theatre starring Bryan Cranston, Marianne Jean-Baptiste, Paapa Essiedu, Tom Glynn-Carney and Hayley Squires. The magnificent production directed by Ivo van Hove opened to rave notices a few weeks back, but it runs until March 7.

And we delivered you the scoop on Sadie Sink (Stranger Things) and Noah Jupe (Hamnet) making their West End debuts in Romeo & Juliet directed by Robert Icke, which runs at the Harold Pinter Theatre beginning March 16 for a limited season until June 6. The full company rehearse late January.

A tip: Theo Jamieson, musical director at the Royal Shakespeare Company, has written the book, music and lyrics for a new musical developed at the National Theatre Studio called Flyby. There’s talk of it heading to Southwark Theatre at some point next year starring Poppy Gilbert (Sherwood, Chloe). From what I’m hearing, Gilbert is a revelation.

You heard it here first.