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Update, Monday, December 12: tickets are now available.
In the nicest way possible, the Old Vic’s current programming feels a bit like Groundhog Day: the show on now is ‘A Christmas Carol’, back for its sixth year in a row; next is ‘Sylvia’, a reworked version of a 2018 musical, and today it’s been announced that the show after that is literally ‘Groundhog Day’, Tim Minchin’s adaptation of the Bill Murray film which last played at stint here in 2016.
Opening to good notices and a decent clutch of Olivier nominations, ‘Groundhog Day’ was the follow-up to Minchin’s all-conquering ‘Matilda’, and the general expectation was that it would go and smash Broadway before eventually pinging back here in a West End production. That didn’t quite happen: the show – with a book by Danny Rubin, co-writer of the classic 1993 film – struggled on the Great White Way, in part because its star Andy Karl was plagued by injury throughout the run.
Anyway, six years on, it’s coming back to where it all started, with a limited run at the Old Vic again led by US performer Karl. He’ll reprise the role of Phil Connors, the cynical weatherman who heads to the town of Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania to report on the cutesy local custom of using a groundhog – it’s a type of rodent – to predict when winter will end. While there he gets inexplicably caught in a time loop – with hilarious, then bleak, then life-affirming consequences.
‘Groundhog Day’ is at the Old Vic, May 20-Aug 12 2023. Tickets are now available
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