The news of the 2026 season follows a fantastic summer with the premiere of Sing Street: The Musical and the upcoming major new adaptation of Dracula, which opened this month.
Artwork for An Ideal Husband, Jaja's African Hair Braiding and Relics.
The Lyric Hammersmith will kick start 2026 with three razor-sharp comedies, set across a single day. This new trio of works will invite audiences into vivid, pressurised worlds, and enable them to investigate how we both understand and misunderstand each other.
Jocelyn Bioh's Tony Award-winning play Jaja's African Hair Braiding will receive its UK premiere and kick off the season. This production will reunite the team behind the theatre's smash-hit School Girls: Or, The African Mean Girls Play , including director Monique Touko.
Jaja's African Hair Braiding premiered on Broadway in 2023. The play is set in a Harlem hair-braiding salon where neighbourhood women come to have their greatest hairstyle dreams come true, all in the hands of a lively group of West African immigrant braiders. Over the course of a hot summer's day, we see how the women get through the pressure cooker of the sweltering shop whilst they share their stories, dreams, and struggles. It will play from 18 March - 25 April 2026.
Following on from that, between 07 May - 06 June is An Ideal Husband. Oscar Wilde's play was first performed in London in 1895 and is a production that mixes sharp wit with political and social commentary. Directed by Nicholai La Barrie, it plays at the Lyric Hammersmith for the first time in 100 years.
An Ideal Husband is a classic comedy that follows Sir Robert Chiltern, who is riding high on all the very best that modern life has to offer a man of his impeccable taste and immaculate reputation. However, when the devious Mrs Cheveley arrives, she has a taste for drama and secrets to spill. This play will uncover the love, betrayal, and scandal that prevail in the rarefied world of modern, affluent London.
Then Ben Ockrent's darkly comedic play Relics will receive its world premiere. Directed by Michael Longhurst, this play follows the reunion of four siblings who come together to clean the contents of their mother's house. Relics explores the legacy of our childhoods and the true cost of family secrets. It will play from 18 June - 18 July 2026.
