Michael Ball plays Willy Wonka at the London Coliseum next summer, in an entirely new staging of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory built at Curve in Leicester. Tickets go on sale on Tuesday 29 September. Here is everything you need to know before you book.
The London Coliseum has spent the past few seasons demonstrating that it can hold a musical as comfortably as it holds an opera, and next summer it gives the stage over to Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, with Michael Ball as Willy Wonka. This is not the staging that ran at Drury Lane a decade ago but an entirely new one, and it reaches London by an unusual route, opening in Leicester this Christmas before the West End sees it at all. We reported the casting on 2 September; with tickets going on sale on Tuesday 29 September, here is the fuller picture.
Who is starring in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory?
Michael Ball plays Willy Wonka, and for the moment he is the only name confirmed: the producers still list the rest of the company as to be announced. He has won two Olivier Awards, for Hairspray and Sweeney Todd, and created Marius in the original London production of Les Misérables, but the more useful credit here is how well he knows this particular address: he has played Anatoly in Chess and Edna Turnblad in Hairspray on the Coliseum stage with English National Opera.
One caveat is worth reading before booking. Ball is appearing at the London Coliseum only, and at certain performances the role will be taken by an alternate who has not yet been named; the producers say those dates will be listed on the production’s own website.
The London company is a separate matter from the one that opens the production. In Leicester, where the show runs at Curve from Saturday 21 November 2026 to Saturday 16 January 2027, Willy Wonka is played by Jonny Fines, with David-Michael Johnson as Grandpa Joe, Molly Lynch as Mrs Bucket and the four golden-ticket children shared between teams of young performers. That casting belongs to the Curve run; nothing beyond Ball has been confirmed for the Coliseum.
What is Charlie and the Chocolate Factory about?
Charlie Bucket lives on the edge of town in a crowded house with his parents and four grandparents, on very little food and less money. When the reclusive chocolatier Willy Wonka hides five golden tickets inside his bars and offers the finders a day inside a factory nobody has entered for years, children across the world tear through the wrappers. Charlie finds the last of the five and goes through the gates with Grandpa Joe, alongside four other winners whose manners do not survive contact with the place.
Roald Dahl’s novel supplies the shape, and the musical keeps the furniture a reader expects — the chocolate river, the Oompa-Loompas, the Great Glass Elevator. What distinguishes this version from the last West End one is the method: illusion and puppetry do the work that machinery used to, which is a deliberate choice rather than a saving, and it is the element most likely to decide whether the factory feels marvellous or merely busy.
Who is behind the production?
The director is Nikolai Foster, artistic director of Curve, whose Kinky Boots filled the same Coliseum stage earlier this year. He is joined by choreographer Ebony Molina, set designer Leslie Travers, Olivier-winning costume designer Katrina Lindsay, lighting designer Ben Cracknell, sound designer Adam Fisher, video designer George Reeve, illusions designer Chris Fisher and puppet designer Rachael Canning, with wigs, hair and make-up by Campbell Young Associates. Stephen Brooker is musical supervisor, George Dyer has adapted the orchestrations and Isaac McCullough is musical director; casting is by Olivia Laydon for Jill Green Casting.
The musical has a book by David Greig, music by Marc Shaiman and lyrics by Scott Wittman and Shaiman — the songwriters of Hairspray, which makes this something of a reunion for their Edna — and it folds in three numbers written for the 1971 film by Leslie Bricusse and Anthony Newley: Pure Imagination, The Candy Man and I’ve Got a Golden Ticket. The producers are ROYO, Fiery Angel, Gavin Kalin Productions and Curve, the last of which also built the show.
When and where can I see it?
Charlie and the Chocolate Factory begins previews at the London Coliseum on St Martin’s Lane on Friday 4 June 2027, with press night on Sunday 20 June 2027 and a final performance on Saturday 18 September 2027 — sixteen weeks, billed as a strictly limited season. Evening performances are at 7pm from Tuesday to Saturday, with 2pm matinees on Thursdays, Saturdays and Sundays, and the running time is two and a half hours.
Tickets go on sale on Tuesday 29 September and currently start at £20, a figure that will drift as the season fills. Age guidance is 7+; under-16s must be accompanied by an adult and under-5s are not admitted. Three access performances are already in the diary: captioned on Wednesday 23 June 2027, signed on Wednesday 14 July 2027 and audio-described on Tuesday 7 September 2027.
What else should I book if I like it?
The Coliseum’s other musical booking of 2027 is Legally Blonde, which plays there from Monday 22 March to Saturday 22 May with Amber Davies as Elle Woods and tickets from £20 — the same stage, the same taste for scale, three months earlier. For the other Dahl in the West End there is Matilda The Musical at the Cambridge Theatre, which has been showing since 2011 how well his cruelty and his sentiment survive being sung.
Two more are worth a look for the same household. Paddington: The Musical at the Savoy Theatre is the current answer to the question of what a family musical built from a much-loved book can do, booking until February 2028, and Oliver! at the Gielgud Theatre offers the older version of the same story — a hungry child, an unreliable adult and a great deal of singing about food — booking until March 2027.
Booking for Charlie and the Chocolate Factory at the London Coliseum opens on Tuesday 29 September for performances from Friday 4 June to Saturday 18 September 2027.
