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Wicked co-stars Ariana Grande and Jonathan Bailey are to reunite on stage in Stephen Sondheim’s Pulitzer prize-winning musical Sunday in the Park With George. The production, hotly rumoured and finally announced on Wednesday, will run at the Barbican Centre, London, in summer 2027.
Sunday in the Park With George, which has a book by Sondheim’s long-term collaborator James Lapine, is a tale of two artists. One is inspired by the pointillist Georges Seurat and the other is the character’s great-grandson. On Wednesday, Bailey and Grande shared a photo on Instagram of them sitting in front of the Seurat painting that inspired the production, A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte, which is on display in the Art Institute of Chicago.
The new production of the musical, which charts the Seurat-inspired character’s relationship with his model, Dot, will be staged by Marianne Elliott, who directed Bailey in an acclaimed version of Sondheim’s Company in the West End in 2018. Company was named best musical revival at the Olivier awards and Bailey picked up the award for best actor in a supporting role in a musical. His career has since skyrocketed, with a role in the Netflix hit Bridgerton and his performances as Fiyero in the two blockbusters based on Stephen Schwartz’s stage musical Wicked.
Ariana Grande, who plays Glinda in the Wicked films, will make her London theatre debut in the Barbican production. It will be designed by Tom Scutt, whose credits include the current revival of Sondheim’s Into the Woods at the Bridge theatre in London. This summer, Grande is set to play 10 nights at the O2 arena in London as part of her Eternal Sunshine tour.
Sunday in the Park With George is produced by Empire Street Productions and presented in association with the Barbican. Further casting will be announced at a later date. Tickets will go on sale in May.
Sunday in the Park With George opened on Broadway in 1984 with a cast including Mandy Patinkin and Bernadette Peters. The musical ran at the National Theatre, London, in 1990, with Philip Quast and Maria Friedman. A 2005 revival was a hit at the Menier Chocolate Factory in London.
Jake Gyllenhaal and Annaleigh Ashford had been due to star in a West End transfer of their Broadway revival of the show, but that production at London’s Savoy theatre was derailed by the Covid-19 pandemic.
