Two weeks after Wicked star Jonathan Bailey dropped out of a planned West End revival of Sunday in the Park With George, producers have pulled the plug on the production. The reboot of the musical was dealt a seemingly fatal blow in early August when the show’s lead, Ariana Grande, announced that she planned to take a break from her public commitments once her Eternal Sunshine tour wrapped on Sept. 1.
Then, Bailey — who co-starred with Grande in the Wicked films — announced on Sept. 1 that he would also be pulling out, explaining, “Ari is one of my dearest friends, and my support for her is unwavering. After much consideration, I have decided to step back from Sunday in the Park with George. This brilliant, introspective musical has been a real passion project for me, and I feel incredibly lucky to have shared in its journey with this team.”
Now, after initially vowing to soldier on and re-cast the revival of the beloved 1984 Stephen Sondheim musical inspired by French pointillist painter Georges Seurat’s most beloved painting, a rep for producers Empire Street Productions told Variety that the show will not go on. “The planned 2027 production of Sunday in the Park with George at the Barbican will no longer proceed as scheduled,” the rep told Variety. “Empire Street Productions will retain the rights with a view to presenting the production in 2028. Further details will be announced in due course.”
The show was slated to open at London’s Barbican Centre theater next summer, with details first announced in January of this year, including Grande taking on the roles of Dot and Marie, originally performed by Bernadette Peters in the initial 1984 Broadway run. Bailey was slated to play opposite her as Seurat, a role originated by Mandy Patinkin on Broadway and then Jake Gyllenhaal in a 2017 Broadway revival.
According to Variety, tickets for the London shows were scheduled to go on sale in May, but with producers expecting huge demand they pushed the date back to September to coordinate with the end of Grande’s tour. But when the singer said she was “taking a step back from visibility” due to “ongoing public scrutiny,” that included striking the show from her schedule, seemingly dealing it a death blow it could not recover from.
Producers initially said they planned to hold auditions this summer to find replacements for the leads — with Bailey saying in his stepping-down statement that he was “so look forward to seeing what the two actors who will now take on these roles will create with it” — but those plans appear to have gone by the wayside for the time being.
