Chichester Festival Theatre – 2026 Programme
Tickets for the general public go on sale Saturday 28th February – earlier booking dates can be found here.
Roald Dahl’s
THE BFG
Monday 9 March – Saturday 11 April | Festival Theatre For ages 8+
Adapted by Tom Wells With additional material by Jenny Worton Directed by Daniel Evans the cast is led by John Leader as the BFG.
A Chichester Festival Theatre, Royal Shakespeare Company, Singapore Repertory Theatre and Esplanade – Theatres on the Bay, and Roald Dahl Story Company production
The opening production of the 2026 Festival season will deliver a theatrical feast of jaw-dropping giants, oversized snozzcumbers, iridescent dream jars and frobscottle fit for the Queen of Enger-land herself.
One extraordinary night, a young orphan named Sophie is snatched by a giant and taken far away to Giant Country. There she learns that human-eating giants are guzzling ‘norphans’ the world over. But she soon discovers that her new friend, the BFG, is different – he’s a dream-catching, snozzcumber-munching gentle soul who refuses to eat humans.
While other giants wreak havoc on the world, the BFG ignites Sophie’s imagination, and they devise a daring plan to save children everywhere. In the end, the smallest human bean and the gentlest giant prove that a dream can change the world.
This darkly comic and mischievous new stage adaptation will transfer to Singapore following its Chichester run.
More Details and to book tickets | Tickets available now
MAGIC
24 April – 16 May | Festival Theatre
Written by David Haig | Directed by Lucy Bailey | Starring: David Haig and Hadley Fraser
A World Premiere based on extraordinary historical events – 2026 marks the 100th anniversary of Houdini’s death – Magic asks what we’re prepared to believe, and why.
Harry Houdini is the greatest illusionist the world has ever known. Arthur Conan Doyle is the creator of literature’s most brilliant detective, Sherlock Holmes.
Their mutual admiration blossoms into a profound friendship, even as they discover a shared obsession with spiritualism. Conan Doyle believes fervently in the psychic world and the promise of reunion with his dead son; Houdini is determined to demonstrate it’s a cruel fraud. Which of these sparring partners will be proved right: the genius writer of fiction or the infallible magician?
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ECLIPSE
8 May – 6 June | Minerva Theatre
Written and directed by John Morton | Starring Sarah Parish and Rupert Penry-Jones
In the kitchen of an old Devon rectory, the daughter who stayed and the son who moved away make conversation with their current and former partners, the milkman, the postman, the care workers. They talk about the weather, the roads, the toaster, the bins. About anything except the simmering tensions between them, as their father lies mortally ill in the next room.
Until the unspoken emotions and conflicts of years boil over.
Eclipse is a painfully funny, acute and delicate play about our struggle to communicate, in the face of life and of death. And our infinite capacity for drinking tea.
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ATONEMENT
29 May – 20 June, Festival Theatre
By Ian McEwan Adapted for the stage by Christopher Hampton Directed by Adam Penford
On an English country estate during the blazing summer of 1935, 13 year-old Briony Tallis witnesses a passionate scene between her elder sister Cecilia and the son of their housekeeper, Robbie. In a disastrous desire for drama but only a dim understanding of its impact, Briony makes an accusation which will fatally alter Cecilia and Robbie’s lives and many others too – for which she will spend the rest of her life trying to atone.
Stretching from the 1930s through the Second World War to the present day, Ian McEwan’s dazzling masterpiece was shortlisted for the Booker Prize and voted by Time Magazine and the Guardian as one of the 100 greatest novels of the past century.
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45 YEARS
12 June – 11 July, Minerva Theatre
From the film by Andrew Haigh Adapted for the stage by Hannah Patterson Directed by Prasanna Puwanarajah | Starring Geraldine James
Buried for decades, the body of a young woman is found in the melting ice. A thousand miles and 45 years away… a crack forms in the crystal of a marriage. It’s the week leading up to Kate and Geoff’s wedding anniversary and preparations for the party are in full swing. As they choose the music for their first dance, a letter from Switzerland quietly shatters their world.
Is the past another country? Or are the secrets in the attic of our memory destined to return?
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My Fair Lady
6 July – 5 September, Festival Theatre
Book and Lyrics by Alan Jay Lerner Music by Frederick Loewe Adapted from George Bernard Shaw’s play and Gabriel Pascal’s motion picture Pygmalion Original production directed and staged by Moss Hart Directed by Rachel Kavanaugh
With an overflowing bouquet of ravishing songs including The Rain in Spain, I Could Have Danced All Night, With a Little Bit of Luck and Wouldn’t It Be Loverly, sparkling dialogue, brilliant lyrics, witty story and gorgeous costumes, this 20th century masterpiece has been described as the perfect musical.
Cockney Eliza Doolittle scrapes a living selling flowers on the streets of London. Her dream of being a lady in a florist’s shop is out of reach unless she can speak ‘proper English’. So when she encounters Henry Higgins, a professor of phonetics, she seizes the chance to transform her life.
Higgins blithely takes on a bet to turn the woman he dismisses as a “squashed cabbage leaf” into a high society paragon. But his impulsive wager becomes a journey of discovery for both him and Eliza.
Based on George Bernard Shaw’s 1913 play Pygmalion, Lerner & Loewe’s multi award-winning musical broke Broadway records when it opened in 1956 and was later adapted into the 1964 Oscar-winning film.
There will be a Dementia Friendly performance on 29 July and a Relaxed Performance on 1 September. A Summer Gala on 28 August will support our fundraising campaign for the next generation of theatre-makers.
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ATLANTIS
A co-production with Theatr Clwyd 18 July – 15 August, Minerva Theatre
By Emily White Directed by Guy Jones
In a small coastal village in Wales, Bryn and Gwen learn they will be forced to abandon their cherished home in the face of rising seawater. Their crisis rekindles Gwen’s crusading spirit, cradled at the Greenham Common protests in the 1980s – a commitment inherited by her granddaughter Rhiannon. But as the years pass, their passionate activism threatens to divide mother from daughter, sister from brother, husband from wife.
Emily White’s lyrical, deeply touching and thought-provoking play, winner of the George Devine Award, follows four generations as they discover the cost of saving their home – and the planet.
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A Small Quiet Light
A co-production with Orange Tree Theatre | 21 August – 12 September, Minerva Theatre
By Stephanie Street Co-directed by Diyan Zora and Elin Schofield | Starring Priyanga Burford
October 1943. In a small office on the Avenue Foch in Paris, a Gestapo interrogator is questioning a young woman who has been known by many different names: Babuli, Jeanne-Marie, Nora, Madeleine.
As one of the secret agents of Britain’s Special Operations Executive – and the first female radio operator to be sent undercover into France – she has evaded capture far longer than most. But now she has been betrayed.
As she faces the fate she has dreaded so long, memories crowd in – a beloved father, a thwarted lover, a gruelling journey to war, and an endless longing for her childhood piano. What has led her here?
a small and quiet light is based on the life of Noor-un-Nisa Inayat Khan (1914-1944), an extraordinarily courageous woman who paid the ultimate price for her heroic fight against fascism.
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A MIDSUMMER NIGHT’S DREAM
18 September – 17 October | Festival Theatre
By William Shakespeare Co-directed by Justin Audibert and Hannah Joss | Starring Munya Chawawa and Jemima Rooper
The exuberant, enchanted world of Shakespeare’s magical comedy A Midsummer Night’s Dream heralds the final Festival Theatre production of the season.
Artistic Director Justin Audibert turns to the Sussex raves of the 1990s for this riotously entertaining new production, co-directed with Hannah Joss (Choir).
Kicking back against the rules imposed by their stuffy elders, four spirited young lovers take off to a forest thronged with mischievous creatures who march to a different beat.
But the king and queen of the fairies are at loggerheads, and psychedelic potions create startling transformations. For a bunch of budding actors, staging a play proves more of a headache than they bargained for. As traditional values go head to head with hedonism and freedom, amidst a whirl of conflicting desires, how will this madcap night of revels end?
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ANTIGONE EXITS
26 September – 17 October, Minerva Theatre
By Nina Segal | Directed by Jeff James
Antigone’s brother has died in a bloody civil war. The king – her uncle – has forbidden anyone to bury the body. Antigone is going to bury the body anyway.
Twenty-five centuries after Antigone, seven performers gather to re-tell the tale of what is buried and what comes of it. Ancient Greece crashes into the contemporary, as Sophocles’ classic tragedy shines a scorching light onto our current world.
Nina Segal’s modern adaptation brings Antigone blazing into the present day.