Nicholas Hytner’s visionary immersive production of ‘Guys & Dolls’ was (and is!) a truly wonderful thing. But the enormous downside of staging a show both incredibly popular and entirely technically unsuited to a West End theatre is that it couldn’t transfer out of the Bridge, meaning one of London’s most prominent new theatres has only played host to a single production for the entirety of 2023 and 2024.
That will change in February with the Bridge’s first show ‘back’, as its founder Hytner returns to his beloved Shakespeare with a new production of Richard II starring ‘Bridgerton’ hearthrob Jonathan Bailey as the dithering monarch.
He’ll play a charismatic take on the king, whose lack of political aptitude and arrogant belief that he really had been appointed to the English throne by God eventually led to his imprisonment, usurpation and death. Er, spoiler alert.
We don’t know any more details so far – Hytner’s previous Shakespeare plays at the Bridge have been immersive productions in the vein of ‘Guys & Dolls’ made in collaboration with the designer Bunny Christie. No designer has been named for ‘Richard II’, and pre-Bridge Hytner directed many conventional Shakespeare productions, so who knows. The only guarantee wuth Hytner is that it’ll be a modern dress production.
