ROYAL SHAKESPEARE COMPANY ANNOUNCES SUMMER 2025 SEASON AND BIG FRIENDLY FAMILY SHOW
Co-Artistic Directors Daniel Evans and Tamara Harvey today announce details of the RSC’s Summer 2025 season and upcoming festive family show, The BFG. This big, friendly production from the Royal Shakespeare Company, Chichester Festival Theatre and the Roald Dahl Story Company, is adapted by Tom Wells and directed by RSC Co-Artistic Director Daniel Evans in his directorial debut for the Company.
Joining the previously announced Hamlet Hail to the Thief and 4.48 Psychosis are five new Shakespeare productions directed by Joanna Bowman, Emily Burns, Yaël Farber, Michael Longhurst and Max Webster, a new version of W. Somerset Maugham’s The Constant Wife, which will see Olivier Award-winning playwright Laura Wade re-unite with Co-Artistic Director Tamara Harvey, the European premiere of Fat Ham by Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright James Ijames, and nationwide tours of Rupert Goold’s Hamlet and First Encounters: King Lear.
The Summer season will welcome internationally-renowned acting talent to Stratford-upon-Avon – including returning artists Simon Russell Beale and Freema Agyeman with Rose Leslie and Nick Blood making their RSC debuts.
Across the season, the RSC will celebrate creative partnerships with Factory International, The Public Theater New York and the Royal Court Theatre. The Company will also step into new spheres of storytelling, collaborating with Brooklyn-based creative studio iNK Stories in a groundbreaking co-production combining Shakespeare and commercial video game production.
Audiences of all ages will have the opportunity to come together to watch, make and explore, with highlights including an 80-minute staging of Shakespeare’s The Two Gentlemen of Verona; Tim Crouch’s I, Peaseblossom, his hit adaptation of William Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream; a programme of interactive theatre workshops, free drop-in activities, family theatre trails, and the return of the RSC’s popular acting-based Summer schools for ages 8-14 and 18-25.
Tamara Harvey and Daniel Evans said:
“Over the last twelve months, our guiding principle as Co-Artistic Directors has been to seek out the most exciting directors, writers and actors working in the UK and internationally, and ask them which stories they feel a passionate desire to tell.
“Our 2025/26 season will bring together an international roster of creative talent, where the works of William Shakespeare stand shoulder to shoulder with some of the most compelling voices in modern playwriting, from Olivier Award-winning playwright Laura Wade to the late, great Sarah Kane and the Pulitzer Prize-winning James Ijames. And then there’s Roald Dahl, one of our greatest storytellers and children’s authors, whose 1982 novel The BFG will be the inspiration for our magical festive family show in 2025, newly adapted for the stage by Tom Wells.
“Alongside five new productions from the pen of our house playwright, directed by Joanna Bowman, Emily Burns, Yaël Farber, Michael Longhurst and Max Webster, we will also celebrate the diverse ways in which Shakespeare’s characters and stories continue to prove fertile ground for re-invention and re-discovery, with the world premiere of Hamlet Hail to the Thief, a frenetic distillation of the Hamlet story, set alongside the soundtrack of Radiohead’s seminal album, and the European premiere of James Ijames’ tragi-comic family drama, Fat Ham. We’re even taking our first foray into the world of gaming with Lili, a powerful, contemporary reimagining of Shakespeare’s Macbeth set in modern Iran, currently in development for 2026.”
THE SEASON IN FULL
ROYAL SHAKESPEARE THEATRE:
- Director Michael Longhurst kicks off the season with a new staging of Shakespeare’s original rom-com, Much Ado About Nothing, set in the glossy world of professional football in a new production featuring Freema Agyeman as Beatrice and Nick Blood as Benedick
- Shakespeare’s great tragedy and Radiohead’s seminal album collide in the world premiere of Hamlet Hail to the Thief, adapted by Christine Jones with Steven Hoggett with music by Radiohead and Orchestrations by Thom Yorke
- Yaël Farber makes her RSC debut with Shakespeare’s enigmatic story of love, loss and rebirth, The Winter’s Tale
- Emily Burns returns to direct a new staging of William Shakespeare’s razor-sharp examination of hypocrisy and corruption, Measure for Measure, following her acclaimed RSC debut in 2024 with Love’s Labour’s Lost
- A Royal Shakespeare Company, Chichester Festival Theatre and Roald Dahl Story Company production, Roald Dahl’s unforgettable story comes to the Royal Shakespeare Theatre stage in Tom Wells’ magical new adaptation of The BFG, directed by RSC Co-Artistic Director Daniel Evans
SWAN THEATRE:
- Olivier and Tony Award-winning actor Simon Russell Beale returns to the RSC alongside Associate Artist Emma Fielding and Natey Jones in a new production of Shakespeare’s bloodiest tragedy, Titus Andronicus, directed by Max Webster, whose recent credits include The Importance of Being Earnest at the National Theatre and Macbeth at the Donmar Warehouse
- Rose Leslie stars in a sparkling new version of W. Somerset Maugham’s The Constant Wife, adapted by Olivier Award-winning playwright Laura Wade and directed by Co-Artistic Director Tamara Harvey
- Originally produced Off-Broadway by The Public Theater and National Black Theatre, James Ijames’ Pulitzer Prize-winning play Fat Ham makes its European premiere with original direction by Saheem Ali, directed for the Swan Theatre by Sideeq Heard
- Multi award-winning writer and performer Tim Crouch presents his magical adaptation of A Midsummer Night’s Dream: I, Peaseblossom
- Richard Nelson’s moving and compelling one-man play, An Actor Convalescing in Devon, visits the Swan Theatre with RSC Associate Artist Paul Jesson
THE OTHER PLACE
- 4.48 Psychosis, Sarah Kane’s final masterpiece, returns 25 years on in a new co-production with the Royal Court Theatre reuniting the entire original cast and creative team. Directed by the award-winning James Macdonald with Daniel Evans, Jo McInnes and Madeleine Potter reprising their roles
- Joanna Bowman directs a new 80-minute version of Shakespeare’s gloriously silly comedy of love and friendship, The Two Gentlemen of Verona
Tickets for Hamlet Hail to the Thief and 4.48 Psychosis are on sale now at rsc.org.uk.
For all other shows, priority booking for Members and Supporters opens from Friday 31 January at 10am with public booking opening on Wednesday 12 February at 10am.
For further information on how to become an RSC Member or Supporter, visit here.
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ON TOUR IN THEATRES, CLASSROOMS AND COMMUNITIES
Also announced today ahead of its opening in Stratford-upon-Avon this February, Shakespeare’s epic family saga Hamlet embarks on a new tour to our partner regional theatres across England in 2026, directed by multi award-winning director and incoming Artistic Director of the Old Vic, Rupert Goold. The production will tour to towns and cities throughout the Spring, including Truro, Bradford, Norwich, Nottingham, Blackpool, Newcastle, York and Canterbury. Full casting for the UK tour is yet to be announced.
Julien Boast, Chief Executive and Creative Director at Hall for Cornwall, the first theatre on the tour, said:
“We’re proud to be standing alongside Rupert Goold and the RSC team to bring this landmark production to a wider audience. Our enduring partnership with the RSC and our national network of Associate Theatres has never been stronger, and this is partnership in the true sense of the word, with community at its heart. It is a beacon and role model for a co-created approach to touring, generating true and mutually beneficial impact that is welcomed by audiences, artists, young people and the local economy, at all our theatres”.
In Autumn 2025, even more young people will experience their first taste of Shakespeare in their classrooms and communities with First Encounters: King Lear directed by Justine Themen. The 12-week tour of schools, theatres and community venues begins in September 2025. The production will open in Leamington Spa, after which it will tour to Cornwall, Skegness, Nottingham, Canterbury, Stratford-upon-Avon, Norwich and Peterborough. The Autumn tour will see the RSC further expand its reach across the country with first-time visits to the Isles of Scilly and Southampton.
This 80-minute version of Shakespeare’s masterful tragedy joins the previously announced Spring tour of First Encounters: The Tempest directed by Aaron Parsons. The tour opens from 6 February in Birmingham with visits to County Durham, Middlesbrough, Hartlepool, York, Hull, Bradford, Stratford-upon-Avon, Stoke-on-Trent, Nottingham, Newcastle upon Tyne, Corby, Blackpool, Cumbria and Northampton. The two First Encounters tours give an estimated 24,000 young people the opportunity to experience a Shakespeare production in their school hall or local theatre this year.
They join the previously announced tour of the RSC’s multi award-winning Matilda The Musical, which begins its second major tour of the UK and Ireland in October, opening in Leicester on 6 October 2025. Based on Roald Dahl’s best-selling novel with literacy and books at its heart, the show has already been seen by 12 million people across 100 cities worldwide. The musical will celebrate 15 years on stage when it opens at Leicester Curve before traveling to Bradford, Liverpool, Plymouth, Sunderland, Edinburgh, and Manchester where it will run through March and April 2026. Further tour dates to be announced.
Daniel Evans and Tamara Harvey added:
“As a national theatre company based in the heart of the Midlands, we believe passionately in the power of Shakespeare and live performance to inspire creativity, ignite the imagination and to change lives for the better. At a time when creative learning provision in English schools has reached an all-time low, our newly announced First Encounters touring production of King Lear will help ensure that thousands more pupils and teachers have the opportunity to enjoy a live performance of Shakespeare or live theatre in their own hometown or city in 2025.”
NEW FRONTIERS – LILI: A SCREEN LIFE THRILLER VIDEO GAME INSPIRED BY THE WORLD OF SHAKESPEARE’S MACBETH
Announced last week is a new collaboration between the RSC and iNK Stories, a New York city based independent game studio and publisher, to create Lili. Set in contemporary Iran, this interactive, video game puts Lady Macbeth, one of Shakespeare’s most iconic female leads, front and centre.
This cross-industry collaboration marks the RSC’s debut in video gaming. Featuring Cannes Best Actress winner Zar Amir as Lady Macbeth (Lili), the game is co-produced by her Paris-based Alambic Productions. Zar draws from her lived experience as an Iranian woman in exile who has courageously confronted her own battles against authoritarian gendered oppression.
Lili is a screen life thriller video game which gives players access to Lady Macbeth’s personal devices, combining the skill and artistry of theatre and film to tell this interactive story. Players will be immersed in a stylized, neo-noir vision of modern Iran, where surveillance and authoritarianism are part of daily life. The gameplay will feature a blend of live-action cinema within an interactive game format, giving players the chance to immerse themselves in the world of Lady Macbeth and make choices that influence her destiny.
Macbeth’s witches are reimagined as hackers, with surveillance cameras and cyber-infiltration putting the player at the heart of the story and giving them a unique perspective into the world of the play. This modern twist on the Macbeth story explores themes of technological domination, the manipulation of information, and institutional violence, reflecting the dark realities of inequities in our digital age.
Tamara Harvey and Daniel Evans, RSC Co-Artistic Directors said:
“From its first performance, Macbeth was always exhilarating: its sudden opening with thunder and lightning raises audience adrenaline levels and propels them as participants, not just spectators, into the jittery, action-driven narrative. Lili creates similar effects for audiences. As a storytelling medium, gaming today is what theatre has always been; a chance to explore worlds, inhabit story, and experience something at once personal and communal. Centring this tense thriller around Lady Macbeth rather than her husband is radical and transformative. It turns the play’s questions around gender, identity and power inside out.”