The Royal Court has revealed 12 productions across the venue’s two stages, including two blockbuster revivals and two world premieres in the Downstairs space.
The Royal Court has revealed the line-up of its 70th anniversary season, with actors including Tilda Swinton and Gary Oldman set to star. Hit Broadway play John Proctor Is the Villain will also transfer as part of the season.
The Jerwood Theatre Downstairs season will open with Luke Norris’s new play Guess How Much I Love You? on 6 January, running until 21 February 2026, and is about an expectant couple waiting in a hospital room as their planned future begins to unravel. Robert Aramayo (I Swear) and Rosie Sheehy (Machinal) will star alongside Lena Kaur (Expendable). Jeremy Herrin (People, Places and Things) will direct.
Norris said: “It’s the honour of my life to get to share this story with audiences. That it will open The Royal Court’s 70th anniversary season in the Theatre Downstairs is a gift beyond my imagining. Just don’t tell me if you think it’s shit.”
Kimberly Belflower’s John Proctor Is the Villain will transfer from Broadway on 20 March, running through 25 April. The show, which starred Sadie Sink on Broadway, will boast a brand-new cast and follows a group of teenagers studying The Crucible at high school and grappling with questions of morality, power, and the struggles of growing up as a young woman. Tony Award winner Danya Taymor (The Outsiders) will direct.
Taymor and Belflower said: “We are thrilled and honored to bring John Proctor is the Villain to the iconic Royal Court Theatre where so many brilliant and audacious artists have created. It feels like special witchcraft that Arthur Miller’s The Crucible also made its English debut at the Royal Court exactly 70 years ago, and we can’t wait to present our production on the very same stage.”
Oldman brings his performance of Samuel Beckett’s Krapp’s Last Tape to the Royal Court from 8 May – 30 May. He had been absent from the stage for 37 years until starring in, directing, and designing Krapp’s Last Tape at York Theatre Royal earlier this year. First performed in 1958, Krapp’s Last Tape follows an elderly man listening to recordings of his younger self on his 69th birthday and reflecting on the passage of time.
The performance will be opened by curtain-raiser Godot’s To-Do List, a new Beckett-inspired short play by Jerwood New Playwright Leo Simpe-Asante, about a confused person wrestling with a series of surreal tasks dictated by a snarky, persistent mystery voice. The show will be directed by Aneesha Srinivasan.
Oldman said: “I’m very excited to be returning to the Royal Court with Krapp’s Last Tape and to share the stage with Leo’s wonderful play Godot’s To Do-List. I’m very honoured and proud to be a part of it.”
Krapp’s Last Tape will be followed by Rajiv Joseph’s Archduke, directed by Lyndsey Turner, designed by Es Devlin and currently playing off-Broadway. Set in 1914 Belgrade, the play offers a loosely historical take on the assassination of Franz Ferdinand from Pulitzer Prize finalist Joseph, whose Bengal Tiger at the Baghdad Zoo plays at the Young Vic from December.
Joseph said: “It is such an honour to be part of the Royal Court’s 70th season, and to bring this world to life with the visions of Lyndsey Turner, Es Devlin and the rest of this wonderful artistic team.”
Swinton returns to the stage in Manfred Karge’s Man to Man, having performed in the one-woman show at the Royal Court more than 30 years ago. Reuniting with director Stephen Unwin, in a show designed by Bunny Christie, Man to Man is set in Germany and follows a woman who assumes the identity of her dead husband to survive political turmoil. The show will run from 5 September – 24 October.
Unwin said: “Never go back!”, it’s often said, but revisiting Manfred Karge’s Man to Man with Tilda Swinton once again wearing the Y-fronts, Bunny Christie designing and Ben Ormerod lighting, is a rare creative opportunity. I’ve developed and changed in countless ways since we first staged the play in the 1980s, but it has shaped many of my creative choices ever since. It will be thrilling to return to the Royal Court and see this remarkable play bloom again, and then take it to Karge’s home, the Berliner Ensemble, where he began his career under the leadership of Helene Weigel.”
Concluding the Downstairs seasons is Ryan Calais Cameron’s new play The Afronauts, which tells the story of the Zambian space race in 1964. The show will run from 14 November – 19 December. Calais Cameron is known for his works including For Black Boys Who Have Considered Suicide When the Hue Gets Too Heavy and Retrograde.
Calais Cameron said: “The Afronauts is a love letter to the dreamers history forgot. It’s about what happens when imagination becomes a form of resistance, and how the fight for freedom isn’t just political, it’s cosmic. At its heart, this play asks: what does liberation look like when the whole universe is watching? For me, it’s not just a story about reaching the moon, it’s about the courage to believe we belonged there all along.”
In Jerwood Theatre Upstairs, the programming includes Jack Nicholls’s The Shitheads, about Britain’s earliest inhabitants and running from 6 February to 14 March. This is followed by Yousef Sweid and Isabella Sedlak’s Between The River And The Sea, running from 15 April – 9 May and telling the story of a Christian-Arab-Palestinian-Israeli man raising Jewish-Arab-Austrian kids in Berlin and facing a custody battle.
Georgie Dettmer makes her playwriting debut with Are You Watching? from 29 May – 4 July, about porn, deepfakes, and disappearing girls. Blood of my Blood by Joy Nesbitt runs from 1 October – 7 November and follows a young, pregnant woman, who rents a cabin on AirBnB to conjure her ancestors.
The Downstairs season is closed by Rhys Warrington, whose play Monument is a portrait of a close-knit community wrestling with its past, its future and the politics of remembrance. The show runs from 3 December – 23 January 2027.
Artistic Director David Byrne said: “Everybody back to ours. The Royal Court is turning 70 with the most thrilling season we could imagine. On our stages and far beyond, we’re throwing a legendary, year-long party and you’re all invited.”
Check back for shows in the Royal Court’s new 2026 season on LondonTheatre.co.uk
Photo credit: artwork for Man to Man and Krapp’s Last Tape. (Courtesy of production)
