They say there are only seven basic plots. But there’s an infinite number of perspectives, and two of the most exciting theatrical prospects of 2026 cast a fresh eye on familiar tales.
Kimberley Belflower’s John Proctor Is the Villain – a smash hit on Broadway – arrives soon at the Royal Court (20 March – 25 April), turning a MeToo-influenced eye on Arthur Miller’s tense witch-hunt tale The Crucible. Set in a one-stoplight town in Georgia in 2018, when the Harvey Weinstein allegations broke, the play follows a group of nascently feminist teenage girls grappling with Miller’s play in English class while navigating the return of a classmate who appears to have seduced one of their boyfriends before disappearing from school for months. Definitely one to take teens to, of all genders.
Playwright Ava Pickett offers a take on another woman in a position of dubious power, in Bloodsport: After Helen of Troy at Stratford East (dates tbc). After being brought home following ten years of devastating war fought in her name, how will the most beautiful woman in the world reintegrate into her own life? And how will the people she left behind receive her? Pickett is a truly exciting young playwright – and her hilarious, devastating scream of a play 1536, about three young women struggling against a rise in violent misogyny following the trial and execution of Anne Boleyn, also transfers this year from the Almeida to the West End, at the Ambassadors Theatre (2 May – 1 August).
The plight – and fight – of women gets serious attention on stage this year. The Ladies Football Club by Stefano Massini (the playwright behind The Lehman Trilogy), adapted for the Sheffield Crucible (28 February – 28 March), explores the joyful rise of women’s football during the First World War – and the plot to take it all away. One hundred and ten years later it feels depressingly timely. Then there’s Sylvia, the unlikely, irresistible hip hop, funk and soul musical about the rebellious child of Emmeline Pankhurst, which opens at the Leicester Curve (24 September) before touring to five other venues including the Royal Albert Hall (13-15 November). Closer in spirit to Hamilton than to the recent Broadway suffragette musical Suffs, Kate Prince’s production pits Sylvia – a pacifist and socialist who campaigned for the rights of all women, including the working poor – against her more conservative mother. Beverley Knight reprises her Oliver Award-winning turn as Emmeline; it’s worth seeing just for her.
The classics keep coming back in 2026, with a raft of thrilling productions ready to shed new light on our own time. Romola Garai gives us her Nora in Anya Reiss’s new version of Ibsen’s A Doll’s House, directed by Joe Hill-Gibbins, at the Almeida (31 March – 16 May). I can’t think of an actress I’d rather see play Ibsen’s cornered, maddeningly infantilised housewife. And the National Theatre has assembled an appropriately dazzling cast to explore the cruelty of Pierre Choderlos de Laclos’s Les Liaisons Dangereuses (21 March – 6 June), adapted by Christopher Hampton. Aidan Turner and Lesley Manville play the appalling Sébastien de Valmont and Madame de Merteuil, egging each other on to toy ever more destructively with the hearts of others. Monica Barbaro (a stand-out as Joan Baez in last year’s Bob Dylan biopic A Complete Unknown), is Madame de Tourvel, the woman who knocks a chink in Valmont’s armour.
There’s more star power behind a uniquely Welsh-inflected Our Town, Thornton Wilder’s masterpiece about life, love and community. The new Welsh National Theatre’s inaugural production, with Michael Sheen as the Stage Manager, opens at Swansea Grand Theatre (16-31 January) before travelling to Venue Cymru, Theatr Clwyd and the Rose Theatre in Kingston.
Finally, it’s back to Arthur Miller: this time at the Young Vic, where a new production of Broken Glass (21 February – 18 April) explores the consequences of disconnecting from the world’s harsh realities, cracking open the relationship of a New York Jewish couple in the wake of reports of Kristallnacht. Directed by the talented Jordan Fein, whose revamped Stephen Sondheim musical Into the Woods also continues at the Bridge Theatre (until 30 May), this is a period piece that nonetheless remains frighteningly relevant.
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This article appears in the 07 Jan 2026 issue of the New Statesman, What Trump wants
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