2026 Season: That's a wrap!

By Regent's Park Open Air Theatre

As we say goodbye to another fabulous season, we are taking a look back at our 2026 highlights and reminiscing over a truly magical summer.

We kicked off our season back in May with our production of Sherlock Holmes, a new mystery by Joel Horwood. Directed by Sean Holmes, this thrilling adventure starred Joshua James as a ‘perky, petulant Sherlock’ (The Guardian ★★★★).

We then continued our commitment to dance programming with A Life in Four Seasons. This new dance work was created by our Associate Artistic Director, Tinuke Craig and choreographer, Alexzandria Sarmiento, with an electric re-imagining of Vivaldi’s The Four Seasons by award-winning composer DJ Walde. This production breathed ‘fresh life into the well-known score’ (The Stage ★★★★) and explored themes of time and memory with a diverse cast of talented dancers.

The season continued with a new production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream. With over 50 productions of this beloved Shakespeare play in our 93-year history, A Midsummer Night’s Dream is an Open Air Theatre favourite. Atri Banerjee’s new version was interspersed with spellbinding melodies from Maimuna Memon, making it ‘a Dream to remember’ (The Stage ★★★★).

This was followed by the return of our Theatre Lawn show, Anansi the Spider for children aged 4+ and their families, featuring classic West African and Caribbean folk tales about the mischievous spider who triumphs over larger foes, brought vividly to life by Unicorn Theatre Associate Director Robin Belfield.

We ended the main season with our much anticipated, brand-new production of Andrew Lloyd Webber’s musical CATS. Directed and choreographed by our Artistic Director Drew McOnie, this ‘spellbinding’ new production (The Telegraph ★★★★) was the first to be seen in London since the iconic original. We are thrilled that CATS is soon to be embarking on its UK & Ireland tour through to June 2027. Find out more about the tour.

Our core season was interwoven with standalone Family, Comedy and Dance events, rounded off with our Music Week where we welcomed a range of artists, including Echo & the Bunnymen and Alfa Mist, to our Open Air stage.

This year, our team has also been busy working behind the scenes with local community groups and schools, offering subsidised tickets and running free workshops for children as part of Westminster’s Inside Out Festival for the second year in a row. We also ran several artist development programmes this year, including our Open Room observerships, the Theatre Dance Lab for early-career musical theatre choreographers, and The Treehouse Project workspace initiative.

We're extremely proud of the year we've had and cannot wait to welcome you back in 2027 for another fantastic summer!

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