Almost exactly a year ago, London’s hippest theatre the Yard closed its doors and moved into an unknown future, as years of cult success and critical acclaim allowed the punky powerhouse – which had been built from scavenged materials with a limited lifespan – to secure the funding for a completely new theatre to be built on the site of the original one.
Catching up with Yard boss Jay Miller, I joke that the theatre’s recent winning of its first Olivier Award for its ‘final’ show The Glass Menagerie was all part of the gentrification of its Hackney Wick locale.
‘I was wondering what the difficult question you were going to ask was!’ he laughs. ‘We’re all super chuffed that we won the Olivier, it was the first year we were eligible. And you know, I’m hoping it’ll be the first one of a few.’
What’s changed with the Yard 2.0 beyond a bigger, fancier building? Quite a few things tbh, with a sense that the theatre has a newfound clout underscored by the obvious jewel in the crown of its inaugural season.
Sir Ian McKellen has remained an astonishingly energetic presence deep into his eighties, with the almost-87-year-old (it’s his birthday this month) having starred in numerous plays over the last five years. Nonetheless, following his widely publicised fall from a West End stage in 2024 there was no stage work last year and the rumour was he was done with it. But no! This winter he’ll be on your screens in Avengers: Doomsday… and on the east London stage in a one man show entitled LEAR, adapted from Shakespeare’s King Lear by top playwright Simon Stephens and Miller himself. It’s a staggering coup.
‘Ian basically said yes,’ shrugs Miller when I ask how it came about. ‘He’s been to see my work, and then I was pitching him a few ideas and he went boring, boring, boring. And then this one came and he went (adopts McKellen impression): “now we’re talking, Jay”. And often it works like this, you ask and you get, and you, I think also, like, it’s about whether you get on and whether you can form a creative collaboration.’
Exactly what LEAR will involve is slightly opaque at this stage but it seems likely it’ll be a mix of Shakespeare’s play and more personal reflections from McKellen: ‘I think it’s gonna be a really beautiful show about both Lear and about Ian’ says Miller. ‘We’ll be able to see Ian just be completely amazing, at what I hope will be the height of his powers’.
It is, of course, just part of the season, which Miller waxes about eloquently but which we’re going to have to zip through a little for space.
As announced a little while ago, the Yard will reopen in July with Philosophy of the World (Jul 14-25), feral performance theatre legends In Bed with My Brother’s 2025 Edinburgh Fringe hit. In it, the trio grapple with the bizarre story of reluctant ’60s/’70s girl group The Shaggs in truly singular fashion.
It’ll be followed by The World Is Full of Unmarried Men (Jul 20-Aug 1), which is, astonishingly, an adaptation of Jackie Collins’ 1968 debut novel performed by Barbie dolls (well, actors holding Barbie dolls). The brainchild of Swedish theatremaker Malmo Stadsteater, it’s been a cult hit in Europe and its London debut is very exciting indeed (for the broad minded theatregoer anyway)
Then there will be a big revival in the form of a 50th anniversary production of For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide / When the Rainbow Is Enuf (Sep 2-Oct 3) by Ntozake Shange, a landmark work of Black theatre that hasn’t had a London revival in decades.
That’s followed by Lear (exact dates TBC, but a decent length run between For Colored Girls and the next play) and then it’s Sex Education writer Troy Hunter’s debut play, a comedy about two gay Black men entitled There’s Something About Adam Black (Jan 13-Feb 20 2027).
The season will be rounded off with Mrs Dalloway (Mar 10-Apr 10 2027), which is, of course, a new adaptation of Virginia Woolf’s landmark novel about a single upper class woman’s inner life on one day during the interwar period. It’s adapted by Holly Robinson and directed by Anna Himali Howard, the duo who recently brought The Secret Garden to the Open Air Theatre stage.
Some bigger names than before – from McKellen to Woolf – and it’ll be interesting to see if there’ll be more famous casting generally, but there’s also plenty of support for newer writers and directors who’d have slotted into the dingy old Yard no problem. It’s the Yard Theatre… but bigger.
The new Yard season will go on sale May 28, except for Lear which will go on sale at a later date when the exact run details are finalised.
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