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If you’re not a theatre nerd, it’s not always easy to snap up tickets to the next big stage smash in good time.
Coming to London on a wave of Broadway hype that may nonetheless have passed the casual London theatregoer by, US playwright Kimberly Belflower’s subversive high school drama John Proctor is the Villain has sold out its entire run at the Royal Court Theatre before it had even played a single show there.
If you’d missed the fact the Old Vic was staging Tom Stoppard’s greatest play Arcadia until after the rapturous reviews came out then again – good luck getting tickets.
Good news, though: they’re both getting new leases of life, and you’ll have ample chance to see both again. Admittedly one chance will come sooner than the other: the dizzyingly clever Arcadia will move to the Duke of York’s Theatre in less than two months, plotting a summer run from June 20 to September 12.
Meanwhile, there’s a rather longer wait to see John Proctor, which is set at a rural US high school and follows a group of sparky high schoolers studying Arthur Miller’s The Crucible at the height of the #MeToo era: it will move to Wyndham’s Theatre next February, which is a chunky wait but can probably be attributed to a relative shortage of mid-sized West End theatres, plus there its American director Danya Taymor is probably unavailable for a while.
At the moment neither play has any cast announced. Arcadia probably has in fact been substantially cast, just not finalised: you can imagine any member of the OG cast with a hole in their schedule will probably be on board – especially as it was the very last Stoppard play for which the late legend signed off the cast himself. But pragmatically, there are likely to be some changes.
There’s a decent chance that John Proctor will have an all-new cast, given it’s so far away and most of the roles are very young, though we’d still put an outside bet on the production’s Broadway star Sadie Sink reprising her role for the West End.
All will be revealed in due course: we’d expect to find out the Arcadia cast very soon, while Proctor will be some months away. Either way, the best time to book for these shows is now, while tickets are plentiful and the many more affordable seats are yet to sell out.
Arcadia is at the Duke of York’s Theatre, Jun 20-Sep 12. Tickets on sale at noon today.
John Proctor is the Villain is at Wyndham’s Theatre, Feb 2-Apr 24 2027. Tickets on sale now.
The best new London theatre shows to book for in 2026.
Plus: the Young Vic has announced a spectacular season including Thelma & Louise and Ben Whishaw.
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