With a Nanny McPhee musical now confirmed for London in summer 2027, it is worth remembering how well the city has done out of the nanny musical. Three of them have held major houses in the past two decades.
Working Title Films and Universal Theatrical Group have confirmed that Nanny McPhee the Musical will receive its world premiere in London in the summer of 2027, with a book by Emma Thompson, a score by Gary Clark and direction by Katy Rudd. The producers say the theatre, the performance dates and the casting will follow in due course, and we have set out what is known about the production separately. What is worth saying alongside the announcement is that the show is not arriving into empty territory. The West End has staged a version of this story three times in twenty years, and it has usually done well.
The obvious precedent is Mary Poppins, which opened at the Prince Edward Theatre in 2004 and returned to the same address twice afterwards. Cameron Mackintosh produced it with Disney, Julian Fellowes wrote the book, and George Stiles and Anthony Drewe added songs to the Sherman brothers' film score. It is the template the others are measured against: a household in trouble, a stranger at the door, and a nanny who leaves once the family no longer needs her.
Structurally, though, the closest relative is The Sound of Music, most recently seen at the London Palladium. Maria is a governess rather than a nanny, but the shape is identical: a widowed father, too many children, a house run on discipline, and an outsider who arrives and rearranges it. Nanny McPhee's Cedric Brown and his seven children sit in the same tradition.
Mrs. Doubtfire the Musical, which opened at the Shaftesbury Theatre in 2023, inverts it. The nanny is the father in disguise, and the family being repaired is the one he has already broken. It is the outlier of the three, and the only one where the household knows less than the audience does.
None of the three is currently playing in London, which is part of why the timing is interesting. There is an audience for this material — family bookings, half-term, the long Christmas run — and at the moment nothing in the West End is serving it directly.
Where Nanny McPhee may differ is tone. Emma Thompson has written the book and co-written the lyrics with Gary Clark, the Danny Wilson frontman who scored Sing Street on film and on stage, and Katy Rudd directs, having made Ballet Shoes and The Ocean at the End of the Lane at the National Theatre. The team around them is built for stagecraft rather than spectacle: Rob Howell designs set and costumes, Ellen Kane choreographs, Simon Hale orchestrates, Chris Fisher supplies the illusions and Samuel Wyer the puppetry. The source material is darker than Poppins: Christianna Brand's Nurse Matilda books are closer to folklore than to Edwardian charm, and the nanny is frightening before she is loved. Thompson made much the same point in announcing the show: "Theatre feels like her natural home - magic, music, mischief and a good dollop of danger can all happen right in front of you."
No theatre has been named yet. Our expectation remains the Aldwych Theatre, which was the Royal Shakespeare Company's London home from 1960 to 1982 and more recently housed Tina - The Tina Turner Musical. Its current tenant, Sinatra the Musical, is booking to 15 April 2027, which would free the house in good time for a summer premiere. The show is produced by Tim Bevan, Eric Fellner, Lindsay Doran, Thompson herself, Paul Warwick Griffin, Gareth Hewitt Williams and Rebecca Quigley for Working Title Films, and general managed by Playful Productions.
An announcement film for the production has been released, and can also be watched on YouTube.
