Ariana Grande will no longer appear in Sunday in the Park with George, removing the performer the West End revival had been built around. The production was already moving on a delayed path toward a June 2027 opening at the Barbican Theatre.
Grande and Jonathan Bailey
Jonathan Bailey was announced earlier this year to lead the production as George, while Grande was set to play Dot. PEOPLE Magazine reported that “Grande will also no longer be appearing in the West End revival of Stephen Sondheim’s Sunday in the Park with George,” after an earlier note that she could not wait to support the team bringing the project to life.
The show has had a long runway. Stephen Sondheim and James Lapine’s musical premiered on Broadway in 1984, with Mandy Patinkin and Bernadette Peters in the original cast, then won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama in 1985 and two Tony Awards for design. Those credentials give the revival a clear prestige argument, but they also make the current stop-start planning harder to miss.
May 2026 to fall 2026
The London revival had first been announced for May 2026, then moved to summer 2026 before ticket sales were delayed again to fall 2026. Auditions for other roles were reportedly taking place this summer, which suggests the production was still assembling around the lead pair even as the calendar slipped.
The wait was tied to Grande’s Eternal Sunshine Tour, which was due to end in London on September 1. That schedule meant the production was planning around her availability and is now moving without her, a change that leaves the revival’s shape more exposed than a simple casting swap would.
Barbican Theatre, June 2027
Marianne Elliot is set to direct and Tom Scutt to design, so the revival still has a creative framework in place. But a show that has already shifted from May 2026 to summer 2026 to fall 2026 now has one more variable to absorb before it can credibly lock its next move.
For readers watching the project as a working production rather than a headline, the practical takeaway is straightforward: the June 2027 Barbican Theatre plan is the number to watch, and Grande’s exit makes it harder to treat that date as settled. Until another lead arrangement is laid out, Sunday in the Park with George is in transition, not launch mode.
