Owen Thomas James looks back at the last twelve months in theatreland
As always at this time of year, we reflect on the past twelve months, asking our reviewers to give us their thoughts and views. It’s always an interesting time to hear what our team are thinking outside of their latest review, and often allows them to cast their eyes a little wider than the fringe venues we spend much of our time at.
Day two of this series of article finds Owen Thomas James asking the simple question, was this the year of the revival? And what does this mean for theatre going forward?
It’s been another extraordinary year of theatre. Looking back at the list of shows to open on the West End, I can’t help but notice an eye-catching number of revivals. While official statistics aren’t readily available to compare year-on-year trends definitively, 2025 felt distinctly different – a year when familiar titles dominated West End openings in a way that demands attention.
The list is striking: Oliver! (Gielgud Theatre), Evita (London Palladium), The Producers (which transferred from the Menier Chocolate Factory albeit at the end of 2024 to the Garrick Theatre), The Importance of Being Earnest (again, at the end of 2024 at the National Theatre before transferring to the Noël Coward Theatre in 2025), The Lady from the Sea (Bridge Theatre), The Weir (Harold Pinter Theatre), All My Sons (Wyndham’s Theatre), Fallen Angels (Menier Chocolate Factory), Into the Woods (Bridge Theatre), and Top Hat (from Chichester Festival Theatre before transferring to Queen Elizabeth Hall). This list isn’t exhaustive either.
The key question isn’t simply whether we saw more revivals, but why 2025 might have been particularly hospitable to them. There are several factors likely behind this. Post-pandemic risk aversion seems to still be influencing programming decisions – a successful title from the past offers a degree of commercial safety that an untested new work cannot guarantee. In an uncertain economic climate, producers understandably gravitate toward shows with proven track records. There’s built-in brand recognition, existing marketing materials, and crucially, evidence that audiences will pay to see it.
Yet this isn’t to suggest 2025 lacked original voices. New works like A Good House (Royal Court), Kenrex (Southwark Playhouse, transferring to The Other Palace), Inter Alia (National Theatre), and Kyoto (which transferred from Stratford-upon-Avon’s Swan Theatre to Soho Place) demonstrated that fresh writing continues to thrive. But the sheer volume of revivals alongside these new works suggests theatres were hedging their bets, balancing innovation with the relative security of established titles.
So, what makes a revival successful? There are essentially two approaches: the traditional revival and the reimagining. Both have their merits, and both were evident in 2025.
Traditional revivals bank on nostalgia and the power of introducing beloved shows to new audiences. If sufficient time has passed since the last production, a revival can feel like a discovery for younger theatregoers who missed it the first time. There’s an implicit endorsement in the decision to revive: if it’s coming back, it must be worth seeing. For those who saw the original, there’s the pleasure of revisiting something cherished, of bringing friends and family “in” on a theatrical secret you’ve been keeping.
The Producers is a good example of this approach. Now playing at the Garrick Theatre following its Menier run, it captures all the anarchic joy of one of musical theatre’s most beloved titles. The production maintains the show’s essence while sharpening its pace. Perhaps surprisingly, given our heightened cultural sensitivity, the full display of Nazi swastikas and odes to Hitler remain intact – a testament to the show’s satirical power and the production team’s confidence that audiences understand the joke hasn’t changed, even if the world around it has.
Re-imaginings are riskier propositions. They can be revelatory or polarising, sometimes both simultaneously. Some audiences are tradition-bound; they attend hoping to recapture a specific experience and may leave feeling the original didn’t need fixing. Others crave fresh interpretations that make them see familiar material through new eyes. The success of a re-imagining often depends less on the boldness of the concept than on the execution – and on whether the production team understands what made the original work in the first place.
But perhaps the most intriguing element of any revival is casting. Star power undeniably drives ticket sales, and 2025 saw several high-profile names attached to revivals. Brendan Gleeson brought gravitas and international recognition to The Weir – a play that premiered in 1997 and still evokes the same chilling discomfort nearly three decades later. Stephen Fry lent his wit to The Importance of Being Earnest alongside Olly Alexander, whose television breakthrough in It’s a Sin ensured younger audiences took note. Rachel Zegler, fresh from West Side Story and Snow White, starred in Evita at the London Palladium. These weren’t just revivals; they were events, built around performers who could guarantee both critical attention and box office returns.
The relationship between casting and revival success raises interesting questions about what audiences are actually buying tickets to see: the show itself, or a particular performer’s interpretation of it? When a production works, these elements become inseparable. The chemistry between cast members, the buzz that builds during previews, the sense that this particular configuration of talent and vision has created something worth experiencing. These intangibles can make or break a revival, regardless of the source material’s pedigree.
So where does this leave us? It seems clear that our appetite for revivals hasn’t simply increased in isolation. Rather, revivals have become a strategic response to multiple pressures: economic uncertainty, risk-averse producing, and the star-casting race that dominates West End programming. When all the ingredients align – strong source material, compelling reimagining or faithful recreation, charismatic casting, and smart marketing – revivals offer theatres a formula that’s hard to refuse.
And the trend shows no signs of slowing. Avenue Q returns to the Shaftesbury Theatre in 2026 for its 20th anniversary. American Psycho returns to the Almeida, where it premiered. Arcadia comes back to the Old Vic, and Jesus Christ Superstar to the London Palladium. If 2025 was the year of the revival, 2026 may well continue the tradition.
Perhaps that’s not such a bad thing. Theatre has always been about re-interpretation, about finding new meanings in old texts, about each generation claiming classics as their own. The question isn’t whether we should continue reviving previous successes – clearly, we will. The question is whether we can maintain the balance between honouring theatrical heritage and making space for the new voices that will become tomorrow’s revivals. On the evidence of 2025, West End theatres are managing that balance, even if they’re leaning rather heavily on one side of the scales.
