SARIG PEKER AND KEREN MISGAV PRESENT
THE WANDERERS
BY ANNA ZIEGLER (PHOTOGRAPH 51)
DIRECTED BY IGOR GOLYAK
MARYLEBONE THEATRE
FRIDAY 17 OCTOBER- SATURDAY 29 NOVEMBER 2025
TICKETS AVAILABLE HERE
Award-winning director Igor Golyak, winner of 4 Off Broadway (Lucille Lortel) Awards for Our Class, will direct the UK premiere of Anna Ziegler’s acclaimed play, The Wanderers, opening at the Marylebone Theatre from 17 October to 29 November, with a press night on 22 October.
Following its critically acclaimed Off-Broadway run at the Laura Pels Theatre in 2023, where the Wall Street Journal called it ‘an absorbing, twisty and thoughtful play’ and ‘the finest play of the year!’, the Wanderers now makes its UK premiere with a brand-new production at the Marylebone Theatre, designed by Berlin based-Jan Pappelbaum, Head of Set-Design-Department of Schaubühne theatre in Berlin since 2000.
Abe is a celebrated writer with a restless spirit and certain disdain for religion—including his own. He is married to Sophie, another writer, whose first book was overlooked. She doubts she has a second book in her— Abe has his doubts too. Their marriage, while rooted in love, is marked by tension, quiet rivalry, and unresolved discontent.
Then an unexpected email from a movie star sets Abe on a flirtatious and increasingly risky journey. What starts as curiosity spirals into something deeper—an unravelling of long-buried truths – threatening his marriage, his sense of self, and the life he thought he built.
Meanwhile, in another time and place, Esther and Schmuli are shy young Orthodox Jews entering an arranged marriage after only one meeting. Gradually, Esther finds herself suffocated by the strictures of her ultra-religious world. A dissatisfaction that couldn’t have higher stakes when it starts to jeopardise her family and the foundation of the only life she’s ever known.
These two narratives intertwine in The Wanderers, a story about longing, connection, and the invisible threads that bind us across generations. Can we ever truly escape the inheritance of our past?
Anna Ziegler is an award-winning playwright and screenwriter whose work has been staged around the world, from New York to London to Tokyo. She is best known for Photograph 51, which starred Nicole Kidman in the West End and won the WhatsOnStage Award for Best New Play. She is currently adapting the play for film, to be directed by Tom Hooper. Ziegler’s acclaimed body of work includes Actually(Los Angeles Ovation Award for Playwriting), Boy (NY Outer Critics Circle nomination), The Janeiad (2025 Susan Smith Blackburn finalist, 2025 Steinberg Award citation), and The Wanderers, which received the San Diego Critics Circle Award for Outstanding New Play when it premiered at The Old Globe, before it went on to be produced around the country and at Roundabout Theatre Company.
In 2026, her new work Antigone (This Play I Read in High School) will premiere at The Public Theatre in New York. On screen, she is developing projects with CBS Studios, FilmNation, and Marielle Heller.
Igor Golyak is a Ukrainian-born, award-winning director and founder of -Arlekin! and Zero Gravity (zero-G) Theater Lab. A bold innovator in hybrid and virtual theatre, his acclaimed 2024 production of Our Class at BAM won four Lucille Lortel Awards, including Outstanding Director. Other notable works include The Orchard starring Mikhail Baryshnikov and Jessica Hecht Off-Broadway, The Merchant of Venice at Classic Stage Company, and the US premiere of The Dybbuk.
During the pandemic, Golyak’s groundbreaking virtual productions —chekhovOS, State vs. Natasha Banina, and WITNESS—earned international acclaim and multiple New York Times Critics Picks. His work has been honoured with Elliot Norton Awards, a Broadway World Best Director Award, and a special citation for innovation.
A graduate of the Russian Academy of Theatre Arts and the Schukin Theatre Institute, Golyak has directed and taught internationally. His company -Arlekin, formed of immigrant artists, has performed across the US, UK, and Europe. He is the founder of the #ArtistsforUkraine initiative.
Full casting and creatives to be announced.
Igor Golyak said, “Theatre, at its essence, is a quiet conversation with the soul, unravelling the delicate threads between tradition and change. In The Wanderers, we see the poetic tragedy of longing—beautiful, endless, and profoundly human.”
Anna Ziegler said, “I couldn’t be more thrilled to bring these five characters—each restless, each full of yearning—to wander in London under Igor Golyak’s inventive, poetic, and emotionally rigorous eye. I can’t wait to see their world unfold on his watch.”
The Wanderers is produced by Sarig Peker of Grapevine Shoot Productions & Keren Misgav of Norel Productions (www.norelproductions.co.uk)
Critical acclaim for previous productions of The Wanderers
“The Wanderers is that rare play worth seeing twice, with a plot to ruminate on for a lifetime.” — Washington City Paper
“This absorbing, twisty, and thoughtful play is the finest play of the year!…In addition to writing with searching depth, Ms. Ziegler can be quite funny…A play of superior quality.” – Charles Isherwood, The Wall Street Journal
“A charming, penetrating, deeply moving new play—it sparkles.” – The New York Sun
“The Wanderers lasts only 105 minutes, yet effectively and expertly holds enough storylines for a half dozen lesser plays.” – The Wrap
“[Ziegler], an increasingly important writer, pulls off a high-wire act with her probing, admirably original world premiere play The Wanderers.” — San Diego Union Tribune
“[Ziegler’s play is] thoughtful, compassionate, funny…The playwright deftly displays the barbed and tender sides of [the central characters’] relationship…But The Wanderers is about more than bittersweet relationships and coping with the past; it’s about the human tendency to be chronically dissatisfied. Confused and yearning, Esther wonders, “Who really understands whether or not they are happy?” — The Washington Post
