After a successful year, two new forthcoming productions at the Jermyn Street Theatre demonstrate what a big hitter the venue is now under the artistic directorship of Stella Powell-Jones and the co-artistic directorship of David Doyle. To bag Simon Stephens’ new play is an accolade in itself.
In collaboration with Dublin’s Glass Mask Theatre, Stephens’ A Slow Fire will be directed by Rex Ryan, who was also involved in the production of the English playwright’s translation of Franz Xaver Kroetz’s nasty battle-of-the-sexes Men’s Business at the Finborough last year. Opening in August, Stephens’ post-apocalyptic play is described by the Jermyn Street Theatre as ‘part thriller, part excavation of the soul’. Stephens says,” A Slow Fire is a nightmare vision that came to me in a jet-lagged dream. It’s a surreal exploration of the urgency of hope in a time of apocalypse. I always secretly knew it belonged in the West End.”
And then in October, the small theatre in the heart of London will present Richard Eyre’s version of Ibsen’s Ghosts, directed by Kwame Owusu, the Carne Deputy Director at JST. Eyre says, “I’m thrilled that my version of Ghosts is going to be performed at Jermyn Street Theatre. It’s the perfect theatre for this intensely wrought play.”
Casting is still to be announced, but tickets can be bought here.
A Slow Fire runs from 20 August to 28 September 2026
Ghosts runs from 9 October to 14 November 2026
