Noah Schnapp makes his stage debut in a world premiere that asks whether a young man can be raised too rich to have known better. Here is everything you need to know about Affluenza before you book.
A new American play, a screen name making a first entrance on a stage, and a question that real courtrooms have had to take seriously: Affluenza begins previews at Riverside Studios in Hammersmith on Saturday 26 September 2026. It is a world premiere, it books for eight weeks only, and it opens an entire season rather than merely filling a slot in one.
Who is starring in Affluenza?
Noah Schnapp, known to a very large audience from Stranger Things, makes his stage debut in the production, and that is the casting the run will be sold on. He is joined by Janette Manrara, the dancer and presenter from Strictly Come Dancing, and by Rupert Young, whose work spans Bridgerton on screen and Dear Evan Hansen in the West End. Juliet Cowan and Wallis Currie-Wood were announced alongside them.
The sixth and final member of the company was confirmed only this month. Donald Sage Mackay brings rather more stage mileage than several of his colleagues, having appeared in Tom Stoppard’s Indian Ink at Hampstead Theatre and in Girl From the North Country in the West End. The first rehearsal photographs followed within days of his casting, and we published them in our first look at the company in the rehearsal room.
What is Affluenza about?
A teenager drives drunk, and the consequences are devastating. What follows is a court case that turns on one distinctly uncomfortable proposition: that a young man raised with limitless money may never have been taught the difference between right and wrong, and ought to be judged on that basis. The premise is not invented. Andy Sandberg has taken it from a real legal defence, and set the play among the very rich of the Hamptons.
What lifts it above a courtroom procedural, on the evidence of the writing so far released, is that it does not stop at the verdict. The play follows the damage outwards through a family, and treats wealth less as a plot device than as an inheritance with a cost attached. It is billed as a dark comedy, which in this subject area usually means the laughter arrives at the expense of people who have never once been told no.
Who is behind the production?
Andy Sandberg both writes and directs. A New York-based writer, director and producer, he became in 2009 the youngest person to win a Tony Award, for the Broadway revival of Hair, and he is Artistic Director and Chief Executive of the Hermitage Artist Retreat. London has seen his direction before, on the UK premieres of Operation Epsilon and Shida, which between them drew several Off West End Award nominations including Best Director.
Set design is by Charlie Corcoran, with costume design and associate set design by Hannah Schmidt, lighting by Jack Weir, sound by Emily Drohan and original music by Will Van Dyke. Nicholas Hockaday is casting director, Cecilie Fray associate director and Florence Carr-Jones assistant director, with additional material by Scott Elmegreen.
The play also opens the Mainstage Season 26/27 at Riverside Studios: five new works, largely set in contemporary America, each running eight weeks, all directed by Sandberg as the season’s artistic director. Sacrilegious, by Tom Schulman, who wrote Dead Poets Society, follows from 5 December - 23 January 2027, and Expecting, by Scott Elmegreen and Drew Fornarola, from 30 January - 27 March 2027.
When and where can I see it?
The production plays at Riverside Studios in Hammersmith, with previews from Saturday 26 September 2026 and press night on Monday 5 October. It books until Saturday 21 November 2026. Performances run Monday to Saturday at 7.30pm, with matinees on Thursday and Saturday at 2.30pm, and the running time is 2 hours 15 minutes including one interval. There is a captioned performance on Saturday 14 November at 2.30pm. Tickets currently start at £25, though that figure moves as a run fills.
What else should I book if I like it?
Four suggestions, all of them on sale now. The Children at the Lyric Hammersmith is the closest match in temperament, a small-cast play in which a reckoning arrives politely and then refuses to leave, and it is a short walk along the same stretch of west London. Kimberly Akimbo at Hampstead Theatre is the other American piece in town at present that gets its laughs from people behaving badly under pressure. The Standard of Living at the Theatre Royal Haymarket is a new play arriving within days of this one, for anyone who prefers their drama untested by the critics. And readers who have come to Affluenza by way of Schnapp will find Stranger Things: The First Shadow at the Phoenix Theatre, the stage prequel to the series that made his name.
Affluenza is booking now at Riverside Studios, from 26 September to 21 November 2026, with tickets from £25.
