Tim Rice and Andrew Lloyd Webber’s enduring rock opera Jesus Christ Superstar is set to return to Oxford in a major new touring production, arriving at New Theatre Oxford for a limited run from 13 to 17 April 2027, with singer-songwriter Sam Ryder cast in the role of Jesus.

The announcement places Oxford on the itinerary of a production that has already generated significant attention in London, where its recent staging has been positioned as a fresh reimagining of one of musical theatre’s most recognisable and influential works.

For Oxford audiences, it offers the chance to encounter a familiar title reshaped through contemporary theatrical language, with a cast and creative team aiming to reassert the show’s original impact more than five decades after its debut.

A modern myth retold through a human lens

At its core, Jesus Christ Superstar is not a conventional biblical narrative, but a reinterpretation of the final days of Jesus Christ through a deliberately human and psychological lens. Structured as a rock opera, it places emphasis on emotional conflict rather than doctrine, and frames the familiar story through the perspective of Judas Iscariot.

In this telling, Judas is not a one-dimensional traitor, but a man wrestling with doubt, loyalty, and fear of a movement he believes may be slipping beyond its original intent. His concerns form the narrative spine of the piece, as Jesus’s growing influence draws the attention of both religious authorities and Roman power structures.

As events accelerate towards betrayal, arrest, and crucifixion, the musical becomes less a historical reconstruction and more an exploration of pressure points within belief systems — the tension between idealism and control, faith and scepticism, devotion and disillusionment.

The result is a work that has long stood apart from traditional musical theatre. First released as a concept album before premiering on Broadway in 1971, it quickly became a cultural landmark for its fusion of rock music and theatrical storytelling, challenging expectations of what a stage musical could sound and feel like.

A score built for scale and emotion

Much of the show’s lasting power lies in its score, which remains one of the most recognisable in modern theatre. Songs such as I Don’t Know How to Love Him, Gethsemane, and Superstar have endured far beyond the stage, becoming staples of musical theatre repertoire and popular performance alike.

What distinguishes the score is its range — from intimate, almost confessional ballads to large ensemble numbers driven by propulsive rock instrumentation. It is this contrast that gives the piece its dramatic tension: moments of quiet introspection are continually disrupted by bursts of collective intensity, reflecting the instability of the world it portrays.

That musical architecture has made the show particularly adaptable to reinterpretation. Each new production tends to find a different balance between rock concert energy and theatrical intimacy, and the upcoming UK tour appears set to lean firmly into both.

What audiences in Oxford can expect

The production arriving at New Theatre Oxford is expected to emphasise scale and immediacy in equal measure. Directed by Tim Sheader with choreography by Drew McOnie and design by Tom Scutt, the creative team reunites artists who have previously collaborated on reimagined versions of the piece, suggesting a continuation of a visually bold, movement-led approach.

Rather than presenting the story in a traditional period setting, the staging is likely to foreground physicality and atmosphere, with choreography and lighting playing central roles in shaping narrative momentum. The result, in previous iterations, has been closer to a concert-theatre hybrid than a conventional book musical — a style that places the audience within the emotional intensity of the performance rather than observing it from a distance.

Audiences can expect a live band-driven score, heightened vocal performances, and staging that prioritises kinetic energy. Large ensemble sequences such as The Temple and Superstar typically function as full-scale theatrical set pieces, while quieter moments are stripped back to isolate character conflict and emotional fragility.

In this sense, the production does not seek to modernise the story through reinterpretation alone, but through form — using contemporary staging language to amplify the rawness already present in the material.

The casting of Sam Ryder

At the centre of the announcement is Sam Ryder, who takes on one of musical theatre’s most demanding and symbolically loaded roles. For many audiences, Ryder will be best known not from the stage, but from his breakthrough as a recording artist and live performer.

Ryder first rose to prominence through social media, where his powerful vocal performances — often filmed in informal settings — helped him build a substantial online following. His career accelerated dramatically in 2022 when he represented the United Kingdom at the Eurovision Song Contest with Space Man, delivering a widely praised performance that marked a significant shift in the UK’s recent Eurovision fortunes. He finished second overall and won the jury vote, one of the country’s strongest results in decades.

Since then, he has developed a profile as a mainstream recording artist known for expansive vocals and emotive delivery, with a stage presence that blends pop sensibility and theatricality. That crossover appeal has made his casting notable: it brings a performer associated with contemporary pop audiences into one of the most historically resonant roles in musical theatre.

In the context of Jesus Christ Superstar, that background may prove particularly relevant. The role of Jesus in this production is not only a dramatic part, but a vocally demanding one, requiring sustained emotional intensity across a score that oscillates between tenderness and explosive power. Ryder’s performance history suggests a familiarity with that kind of vocal range, even if the theatrical discipline represents a new arena.

A production that reflects its own legacy

Half a century on from its first staging, Jesus Christ Superstar continues to occupy a distinctive place in the theatrical landscape. It is both widely familiar and continually reinterpreted — a work that exists simultaneously as cultural touchstone, concert piece, and stage drama.

This latest UK tour, arriving in Oxford in 2027, positions itself within that lineage rather than outside it. By combining a recognisable score, a modern creative team, and a cast bridging theatre and contemporary music, it extends the show’s long-standing identity as a work in motion rather than a fixed artefact.

For audiences, the attraction may lie in that tension: a story deeply embedded in cultural memory, re-presented not as something preserved, but as something still evolving in real time on stage.

Tickets for the Oxford run are available via the theatre’s official listing page at ATG Tickets.

Half a century after Fawlty Towers first appeared on television screens, John Cleese is still slightly bemused by its enduring popularity.

The comedy legend, who co-created the sitcom with Connie Booth, admits he was confident that Fawlty Towers – The Play would find an audience when it opened in London’s West End in 2024. What he did not anticipate was the scale of its success.

“To be honest, I was more confident about it than almost anything I’ve ever done,” he says. “I remember reading the finished script and thinking it was really funny.”

That confidence has been rewarded. Following two sold-out West End seasons, the production is now touring the UK and Ireland, bringing Basil Fawlty, Manuel, Polly and Mrs Richards to audiences far beyond London.

For Cleese, the appeal is simple: people love farce.

“The English do love farce,” he says, citing everyone from Ben Travers to Brian Rix and Ray Cooney. “Farce is universal.”

It is also remarkably timeless. While only 12 episodes of Fawlty Towers were ever made, the series remains deeply embedded in British culture. Cleese recalls hearing about a family who play a game in which they try to slip famous quotes from the sitcom into everyday conversations without the others noticing.

“How great a compliment is that?” he says. “If anyone says, ‘Don’t mention the war’, everyone knows its origin.”

The stage adaptation combines three classic episodes — The Hotel Inspector, The Germans and Communication Problems — into a single theatrical experience, complete with a new finale written by Cleese himself.

The response from audiences has been overwhelming.

When the production first opened at London’s Apollo Theatre, Cleese remembers watching the audience react to Basil’s increasingly desperate attempts to maintain order.

“They were literally rocking with laughter,” he says.

At 86, retirement appears nowhere on the horizon. Alongside celebrating the 50th anniversary of Fawlty Towers with his new book, Fawlty Towers: Fawlts And All – My Favourite Moments, Cleese has been developing several new projects.

These include a potential television revival of Fawlty Towers, co-created with his daughter Camilla, a stage musical adaptation of A Fish Called Wanda, and a new film project currently in development.

Yet despite his ongoing creative work, Cleese remains convinced that comedy’s greatest value lies in its ability to help people through difficult moments.

“I don’t need that sort of validation,” he says when discussing honours and awards. “It’s enough for me to know that I’ve helped people through difficult times by making them laugh.

“They come home, turn on an episode of Fawlty Towers and the world doesn’t seem quite so bleak. That’s my reward.”

In an age often characterised by division and uncertainty, Cleese believes laughter remains one of the most valuable things we can share.

“I think we need much more laughter in the world,” he says. “I’m not advocating mean teasing. Just good old-fashioned laughter.

“There’s nothing to beat it.”

John Cleese’s Fawlty Towers – The Play runs at New Theatre Oxford from Tuesday 14 July to Saturday 18 July.

When Waitress arrives at New Theatre Oxford as part of its UK and Ireland tour, it will do so with the confidence of a show that already knows exactly what it is — and what audiences are coming to it for. This is not a musical in search of discovery, but one that invites recognition: of its songs, its emotional terrain, and its quietly affecting portrait of ordinary lives under pressure.

The production, which will open in Oxford from 29 June to 04 July 2026, is part of a decade-long journey that has taken Sara Bareilles’ Broadway hit from New York to the West End and across international stages. Yet despite that global footprint, its appeal remains strikingly intimate. Set almost entirely within a small-town diner, Waitress builds its world from routine gestures: orders called out over a counter, friendships formed during shifts, and private dreams folded into the rhythm of daily work.

At the centre of that world is Jenna, played on this tour by Carrie Hope Fletcher, a woman whose life is shaped by constraint as much as possibility. She is a gifted pie maker in a loveless marriage, unexpectedly pregnant, and quietly beginning to imagine that escape might still be possible. The story never treats that realisation as sudden or dramatic. Instead, it unfolds gradually, through small decisions and moments of connection, particularly with the women she works alongside.

Those relationships form the emotional backbone of the piece. Becky and Dawn are not simply supporting characters but essential counterweights to Jenna’s isolation, offering humour, candour and solidarity in equal measure. It is in these exchanges that Waitress finds much of its warmth, balancing difficult subject matter with a lived-in sense of companionship that feels earned rather than imposed.

The diner itself becomes more than a setting; it functions as a kind of emotional ecosystem where personal struggles are both hidden and shared. That balance between privacy and exposure is part of what has allowed the show to travel so widely. Audiences may not recognise Jenna’s exact circumstances, but they recognise the feeling of being stuck, of imagining alternatives, and of needing other people to make those alternatives feel real.

Sara Bareilles, who wrote the music and lyrics, has described the show’s enduring appeal in simple terms: heart, humour and community. Those three elements are not decorative but structural. The humour often arrives quietly, embedded in dialogue and character rather than punchlines. The heart emerges most clearly in moments of vulnerability that the score allows space to breathe. And community — particularly among the women in the diner — becomes the mechanism through which change is even conceivable.

That emotional architecture is what gives the score its particular resonance. Songs such as She Used to Be Mine have taken on a life far beyond the production itself, not because they overwhelm, but because they articulate something recognisably private. Bareilles has spoken about the experience of hearing audiences form their own relationships with the music, describing it as a sense of the work becoming “like an old friend”.

This touring production is led by Carrie Hope Fletcher as Jenna, bringing a performer known for her ability to balance vocal strength with emotional directness. Around her, the cast includes Sandra Marvin as Becky, Evelyn Hoskins as Dawn, and Les Dennis as Joe, the diner’s owner — a figure who sits slightly outside the central trio of women but remains deeply embedded in their world.

Dennis has described Joe as a “curmudgeonly” presence with a “buttercream centre”, a man who observes more than he reveals. His role is not to resolve Jenna’s story, but to reflect it back in quieter, often more reflective ways. In a show so focused on cycles of endurance and care, Joe represents time itself: what it costs, what it leaves behind, and what it occasionally returns.

One of the defining qualities of Waitress is its refusal to simplify the emotional lives of its characters. There are no clean antagonists, no neatly drawn transformations. Instead, the musical presents a series of imperfect people navigating difficult circumstances, sometimes well, sometimes badly, and often somewhere in between. Sara Bareilles has described this as one of the show’s central intentions: to focus not on heroes or villains, but on people trying to get through their lives.

That approach is reflected in the production’s creative foundations, with direction by Diane Paulus and choreography by Lorin Latarro shaping a style that prioritises intimacy over spectacle. The result is a staging language that keeps attention fixed on character interaction rather than theatrical display, reinforcing the sense that what matters most is happening at conversational distance rather than centre stage.

As a touring production, Waitress also carries with it the accumulated memory of its previous incarnations. It arrives in Oxford not as a first encounter, but as part of a longer cultural conversation — one in which audiences may already know the songs, recognise the story beats, or arrive with their own emotional associations. That familiarity is not a barrier to engagement but part of the experience itself.

What remains, even on first viewing, is the clarity of its emotional intent. Waitress is ultimately about what it means to imagine a different life, and what it costs to move towards it. It is about friendship as support structure, work as both constraint and refuge, and the quiet ways in which people begin to change.

In Oxford, that story will once again unfold in the familiar setting of a diner where pies are baked, conversations overlap, and life continues in all its complications. And as ever, the invitation is not simply to watch Jenna’s story, but to recognise something of one’s own in it — the hesitations, the hopes, and the small, persistent belief that change might still be possible.

Waitress opens at New Theatre Oxford from 29 June to 04 July 2026, with limited tickets remaining.

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