Damian Lewis, Milly Alcock, Stephen Sondheim and more announced for Rupert Goold’s first season at the Old Vic

The most anticipated London theatre season of 2027 has finally been announced! Rupert Goold led the Almeida Theatre in Islington through a decade-long golden age of bold, provocative theatre and seemingly endless West End transfers. Really quite a long time ago (in 2024) it was announced that he and his associate director Rebecca Frecknall (best known for her long-running Cabaret revival) would be leaving the Almeida and taking over at the much larger Old Vic. Both Goold and the Old Vic’s outgoing boss Matthew Warchus took their sweet time going, with lengthy final slates of work.

But now, finally, we have the first programming for Goold’s Old Vic tenure and it looks very good.

First up, Damian Lewis will make his Old Vic debut in Goold’s own production of Shakespeare’s Henry V (Jan 26-Mar 27 2027). It’s a hugely popular play that can be interpreted as anything from a patriotic story of English derring do, to a bitter anti-war treatise. We don’t know what to expect exactly, but we’ve been promised this one will be provocative.

Whether or not we see Milly Allcock as Supergirl again, we’ll certainly see her back on the London stage, following her debut a few years back in the NT’s The Crucible. She’ll take on the title role of August Strindberg’s searing tragedy of class and lust Julie (Apr 10-May 29 2027), playing the titular young woman who has a torrid, troubling relationship with her father’s servants. It’s directed and adapted by Frecknall.

Next year has proved a complicated one for London lovers of Stephen Sondheim: Sunday in the Park with George was announced in a blaze of publicity and then cancelled; West Side Story seems to be happening. And now Goold will be helming the first London revival in a minute for Sondheim’s sardonic chamber piece Assassins (Jun 15-Aug 21 2027), a dark pageant of all the successful and would-be president killers in US history. 

Finally (for now) Arinzé Kene will reunite with leftfield director Omar Elerian for a short run of Kohlhaas (Aug 27-Sep 4 2027), Marco Baliani and Remo Rostago’s monologue adaptation of Heinrich von Kleist’s 1810 novella about the titular protagonist’s quest for vengeance after a nobleman steals two of his horses. It played the Brighton Festival this year to great acclaim, so get in there.

It’s a strong start for Goold, a little more rooted in the classics than a typical Almeida season but with that old razzle dazzle still intact.

Aside from the obvious fact that the autumn season is still TBA, 2027 will also herald the first-ever programming in the theatre’s Greene Studio (a season will be announced early next year), the launch of £20 front row rush tickets for people under 30 during previews (‘Old Vic New Rush’) and an ongoing partnership with the Netherlands’ eternally hip Internationaal Theater Amsterdam (who Frecknall made Julie for originally, and who scored a big Almeida hit via the transfer of its show The Years).

All announced shows are on sale now.

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