[title]
It’s been a long time since we had a proper season announcement from the Young Vic: its previous artistic director Kwame Kwei-Armah announced his departure – ands a year’s worth of programming – in February 2024. But his successor Nadia Fall has been beavering away behind the scenes, and finally has her first season ready to go.
And a very decent season it is, focussing on the Young Vic’s historical bread and butter of big name classic plays with interesting directors.
Fall will kick things off herself in September by directing the first Joe Orton production London has seen in an age, tackling the 1964 classic Entertaining Mr Sloane (Sep 15-Nov 8), a dark comedy about a lodger who infiltrates a brother and sister’s family home, to the deep misgivings of their father. Not seen in London since 2009, this production will star Tamzin Outhwaite and Daniel Cerqueira as middle-aged siblings Kath and Ed.
The big show over Christmas will be the UK premiere of US playwright Rajiv Joseph’s Bengal Tiger at the Baghdad Zoo (Dec 2-Jan 31 2026), which previously ran on Broadway in a production starring Robin Williams. Set in a chaotic post-Saddam Iraq, surrealist director Omar Elerian’s production will star David Threlfall as a fast-talking tiger wondering what the hell he is doing in the chaos of Baghdad – the production will also star Arinzé Kene, Ammar Haj Ahmad and Hala Omran.
Into next year and Jordan Fein – director of the recent smash hit revival of Fiddler on the Roof – will turn his hand to non musical theatre with a revival of Arthur Miller’s late classic Broken Glass (Feb 21-Apr 18 2026), casting tba. Following that, auteur Brit Alexander Zeldin directs the UK premiere of CARE (May 11-Jul 11 2026), his drama about an elderly grandmother unceremoniously moved to a care home by her busy family.
Kwei-Armah made little use of the Young Vic’s second space the Maria, but Fall seems to be a fan, and there will be three studio productions in her first season. Ohio (Sep 30-Oct 24), by Abigail and Shaun Bengson, is an intimate autobiographical folk musical about their experience of losing faith in religion but finding it in music. The Museum of Austerity (Dec 5-Jan 16 2026) is a mixed-reality headset-based exhibition from Sasha Wares that confronts the reality of life in the UK for disabled people who whom the social security net has failed. Finally, running next summer is Sophie Swithinbank’s Sting (Jun 18-Jul 18 2026), a satire on systematic institutional failure that follows an off-the-rails young woman who has just started work on an assignment to catalogue historic cases of women being accused of witchcraft in the UK.
Entertaining Mr Sloane, Ohio, Bengal Tiger at the Baghdad Zoo, and Museum of Austerity will go on sale Monday May 19; the rest will go on sale in the autumn.
The best new London theatre shows to book for in 2025.
Indhu Rubasingham announces her first season at the National Theatre.