Established in 1932, the award-winning Regent’s Park Open Air Theatre is one of the largest theatres in London. Situated in the beautiful surroundings of a Royal Park, both its stage and auditorium are entirely uncovered. The theatre is celebrated for its bold and dynamic productions (The Turn of the Screw, Little Shop of Horrors, The Seagull, Porgy and Bess, The Crucible, Henry V), with audiences of over 140,000 each year during its 18-week season.
“Regent’s Park Open Air Theatre has been transformed into one of the capital’s most exciting spaces.”
The Guardian
Timothy Sheader and William Village were appointed Joint Chief Executives in 2007. During their tenure, the theatre’s productions of To Kill a Mockingbird and The Sound of Music won the WhatsOnStage Best Play Revival and Best Musical Revival Awards respectively, Into the Woods won the Olivier Award for Best Musical Revival and transferred to the Delacorte Theatre, Central Park, New York in 2012, and Hello, Dolly! won the Evening Standard Award for Best Musical alongside a further three Laurence Olivier Awards. 2011’s record-breaking production of Crazy for You transferred directly to London’s West End, winning the Olivier Award for Best Musical Revival and Best Costume Design.
The theatre’s ambition of reaching new audiences beyond the Park has seen their productions of Pride and Prejudice, Lord of the Flies and To Kill a Mockingbird tour the UK and Ireland, the latter subsequently transferring to the Barbican for a month-long residency in 2015, and their co-production with Chichester Festival Theatre of Michael Morpurgo’s Running Wild toured the UK in 2017.
The 2016 sell-out production of Jesus Christ Superstar won the Olivier Award for Best Musical Revival and Evening Standard Award for Best Musical, and the production returned to the Open Air Theatre for an extended engagement in 2017 ahead of a run at the Lyric Opera of Chicago in Spring 2018. The production plays 60 performances at the Barbican Theatre (4 July – 24 August 2019), and a North American Tour commences in Autumn 2019.
