They’ve Always Belonged Together! Ariana Grande and Jonathan Bailey to Lead London Revival of Sunday in the Park with George

Bit by bit, the much-anticipated London stage revival of Sunday in the Park with George is being put together. Last month, Deadline reported that Wicked film stars Ariana Grande and Jonathan Bailey were in talks to lead a new staging of the Pulitzer Prize winning musical, with producers setting their sights on London’s Barbican Centre for a summer 2027 opening. The news was confirmed on January 14, when an official Instagram account for the production was launched with an accompanying announcement. Tony winner Marianne Elliot, who previously worked with Bailey on the 2018 West End revival of Company, is attached to direct. Tom Scutt will design the production.

Shortly before the official announcement, Grande and Bailey shared a joint Instagram post of them gazing upon Georges Seurat’s painting “A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte” with the caption: “All it has to be is good”—a lyric from the show’s opening number.

Grande and Bailey starred together in the film adaptation of Wicked (for which Grande received an Oscar nomination) and its sequel Wicked: For Good. Bailey won an Olivier Award for his comic turn in the aforementioned Company revival. Last year, he played the title role in a London production of Shakespeare’s Richard III and has been working on the West End since he was a child. Grande also has early ties to theater, having made her Broadway debut at 15 years old in the Jason Robert Brown musical 13 before ascending to pop superstardom.

Originally staged on Broadway in 1984, Sunday in the Park with George offers a fictionalized take on the inception of the famous “Sunday Afternoon” painting. Bailey will play the surly but passionate Seurat and Grande will portray his lover Dot. With music and lyrics by Stephen Sondheim and a book by James Lapine, Sunday in the Park with George was most recently revived on Broadway in 2017 with Jake Gyllenhaal and Annaleigh Ashford. The original production, which starred Mandy Patinkin and Bernadette Peters, was immortalized through PBS’ Great Performances series.