Covent Garden’s Donmar Warehouse just unveiled its 2026 winter season, with Rupert Everett and Simon Russell Beale starring in a Harold Pinter classic
We are so seated
The Donmar Warehouse might not be the first venue you think of when you hear “London Theatre” or "West End shows" – probably because it’s actually just off the city's iconic West End. Nestled in Covent Garden, the 251 seat theatre might be one of the capital’s more boutique venues, but it has just a storied history as the rest of the red-curtained sites. Currently showing a sold-out run of The Guilty starring Russell Tovey, the theatre has just unveiled its 2026 winter programme – and it’s a corker.
First up on the docket is Ilford Boy, Danny Lee Wynter’s semi-autobiographical comedy-drama about coming of age as a mixed race teenager in 90s London. That production will be running from October 10th until November 28th with Sinead Matthews and Ria Zmitrowicz in leading roles, alongside Leo Whitfield-Harris who will be making his (professional) theatrical debut as the protagonist, Ted. This production is the play’s world premiere.
The show with the biggest star power on the lineup is a revival of the legendary Harold Pinter’s play No Man’s Land – not about the London Dating Scene (that would be No Available Men’s Land), but follows the bizarre unsettling antics of Hirst and Spooner, a duo of older men who have a series of strange encounters at Hirst’s luxurious home in North London. This will be the first major London production of the play since Ian McKellen and Patrick Stewart did a run at Wyndham’s Theatre in 2016. It's crytpic, it's nuanced, and it's running from February 13th until April 10th (2027), wrapping up the theatre's winter season.
In between both of those shows is a new play by Stuart Slade called The King’s Ransom. Big time director Matthew Dunster is helming this production’s debut and it’s a dramatisation of the shocking events of 1977 when just 13 days after his passing, the police thwarted an attempt by four men to steal Elvis Presley’s body from a mausoleum, and their planned $10 million ransom for its safe return. We don’t have any casting announcements yet, but as the play is running from December 5th until February 6th hopefully we’ll get an update soon.
Matthew Dunster who is directing the whole shindig is known for securing celebrity actors to take leading roles in his shows (he was the man responsible for Lily Allen’s West End Era and look how that turned out), so eyebrows are already twitching over who may be making a cameo in the show. He’s also the man behind 2:22 A Ghost Story which was basically a who’s who of celebrity faces by the end of it, starring Giovanna Fletcher, Laura Whitmore, Sophia Bush, Stacey Dooley, and plenty more famous names. Could he be calling on old colleagues? Potentially... I would definitely pay to see Stacey Dooley playing Elvis Presley. Even if it is a corpse-only role, we could still see a Tony nomination on the horizon.
Tickets for every production in the winter 2026/7 season at The Donmar Warehouse will be heading on sale on 31st July.
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