{"id":318942,"date":"2025-12-16T11:38:11","date_gmt":"2025-12-16T11:38:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/318942\/"},"modified":"2025-12-16T11:38:11","modified_gmt":"2025-12-16T11:38:11","slug":"ariana-grande-jonathan-bailey-eye-musical-in-london-in-2017","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/318942\/","title":{"rendered":"Ariana Grande & Jonathan Bailey Eye Musical In London In 2017"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tEXCLUSIVE:\u00a0Wicked\u2019s\u00a0Ariana Grande<\/a> and Jonathan Bailey<\/a> are in early planning stages to reunite in a revival of Stephen Sondheim<\/a> and James Lapine<\/a>\u2019s Pulitzer Prize-winning musical\u00a0Sunday in the Park With George<\/a>,\u00a0to be directed by multiple Tony Award and Olivier Award recipient Marianne Elliott<\/a> in London in 2027, Deadline has learned.<\/p>\n

\n\tThere are many moving parts, some bigger than others, involved at this delicate juncture more than 18 months ahead of a potential summer opening at London\u2019s Barbican<\/a> Theatre.<\/p>\n

\n\tUnderstandably, there will be no official announcement until all of those parts are firmly locked into place.<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\"\"<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\tJonathan Bailey as Fiyero and Ariana Grande is Glinda in \u2018Wicked: For Good\u2019<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tUniversal<\/p>\n

\n\tI am reliably informed that all involved are understood to be \u201ccautiously optimistic\u201d that the show will go on with Grande and Bailey in 2027.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe show is suggested by the painting\u00a0A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grand Jatt,\u00a0created by Georges Seurat over two years between 1884-86 employing the pointillist technique. The artwork depicts people of varying social classes strolling and relaxing in a Parisian park on the Seine.<\/p>\n

\n\tLapine and Sondheim demonstrate\u00a0how the artist might have put his huge painting together, by imagining who the people in Seurat\u2019s painting might be. They include the character of Dot, George\u2019s (yes, Georges is now George)\u00a0witty lover and muse; in the second act, the same actress plays Dot\u2019s daughter Marie. Those roles were originated at the Booth Theatre on Broadway by Mandy Patinkin and Bernadette Peters, respectively. Philip Quast and Maria Friedman created the parts over here in London in a production at the National Theatre directed by Steven Pimlott. It won the Olivier for Best New Musical.<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\"\"<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\tBernadette Peters and Mandy Patinkin during rehearsals for \u2018Sunday in the Park with George\u2019<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tGetty Images<\/p>\n

\n\tAt early read-throughs, I\u2019ve heard that both Grande and Bailey have excelled in the parts. They\u2019re joined at the hip as friends having now worked together for the past few years on\u00a0Wicked\u00a0and this year\u2019s terrific\u00a0Wicked: For Good\u00a0with director Jon M. Chu and Cynthia Erivo.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tThere has been blather on social media about this version of\u00a0Sunday in the Park With George\u00a0and Grande has hinted that she\u2019s hoping to return to the boards, but I hope my reporting gives you a sense of what\u2019s going on behind the scenes. As for Bailey, the show would reunite him with Elliott. It was her production of\u00a0Company, produced with Chris Harper, her former partner in Elliott & Harper Productions, that helped super-charge Bailey\u2019s career. He was a standout as Jamie, originally the Amy role, in the gender-switching production that played at the Gielgud Theatre for a season in 2018\u00a0with an ensemble that included Rosalie Craig (Riot Women,\u00a0which is a brilliant Sally Wainwright BBC drama, by the way) and Patti LuPone (The Artist, Agatha All Along).<\/p>\n

\n\tIt was a pretty magnificent contemporary reexamination of the 1970 musical created by Sondheim with George Furth, originally directed by Hal Prince.<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\"\"<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\tStephen Sondheim<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tBaz Bamigboye\/Deadline<\/p>\n

\n\tWell ahead of\u00a0Company, Elliott visited with Sondheim in NYC and later the famed composer and lyricist traveled\u00a0to London for\u00a0Company\u00a0rehearsals. During that time the pair had a series of ongoing conversations about what else in the Sondheim canon she was interested in directing.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tSunday in the Park With George\u00a0was one of those that was discussed. I understand that\u00a0West Side Story\u00a0was the other, perhaps destined for the National Theatre in 2027-28? But that\u2019s a story for another day.<\/p>\n

\n\tAnd, Elliott\u2019s always keen to work with Bailey, having done so again in 2022 at the Ambassadors Theatre on Mike Bartlett\u2019s play\u00a0Cock.<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\"\"<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\tMarianne Elliott<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tGetty Images<\/p>\n

\n\tElliott\u2019s version of\u00a0Sunday in the Park With George, if all those aforementioned moving parts can be glued tight, would play the Barbican\u2019s\u00a0summer musical slot, a season established by Howard Panter\u2019s Trafalgar Theatre Productions with shows such as Cole Porter\u2019s\u00a0Anything Goes. This year it was\u00a0Fiddler on the Roof, which transferred from the Open Air Theatre in Regent\u2019s Park. The 2026 offering will be\u00a0High Society starring Helen George (Call the Midwife) and Felicity Kendal (Rivals, The Good Life). Kendal led in many of Tom Stoppard\u2019s plays in the West End; the great man\u2019s private funeral was conducted yesterday.<\/p>\n

\n\tRELATED: Tom Stoppard Dies: Playwright & Oscar-Winning \u2018Shakespeare in Love\u2019 Writer Was 88<\/a><\/p>\n

\n\tSondheim\u2019s\u00a0Into the Woods\u00a0is now\u00a0playing at London\u2019s Bridge Theatre and there\u2019s a promise of more Grade-A\u00a0appreciations of the musical theater titan\u2019s work to come as the centenary of his birth approaches in 2030.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe passion for Sondheim will never wane.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"EXCLUSIVE:\u00a0Wicked\u2019s\u00a0Ariana Grande and Jonathan Bailey are in early planning stages to reunite in a revival of Stephen Sondheim…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":318943,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[2868,50953,47636,96,59,126212,19613,126213,126214,126215,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-318942","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-entertainment","tag-ariana-grande","tag-barbican","tag-breaking-baz","tag-entertainment","tag-gb","tag-james-lapine","tag-jonathan-bailey","tag-marianne-elliott","tag-stephen-sondheim","tag-sunday-in-the-park-with-george","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/318942","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=318942"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/318942\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/318943"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=318942"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=318942"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=318942"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}