Musical Today The Notebook will open the Judi Dench Theatre in April 2027, with 50,000 seats at £50 or less
The Notebook, the musical of Nicholas Sparks's novel with a score by Ingrid Michaelson and a book by Bekah Brunstetter, is coming to London. It will play the Judi Dench Theatre, the Shaftesbury Theatre under its new name, with previews from 10 March 2027 and an opening night on 13 April.
The production
Directed by Michael Greif and Schele Williams, as on Broadway. The story runs the couple at three ages in parallel, which is the device the Broadway staging was praised for and the one London will see.
The prices
Tickets from £20, and the producers say 50,000 tickets across the run will be priced at £50 or less. That is a deliberate position in a West End where the top price for a new musical passes £150.
Broadway
The Broadway production ran at the Schoenfeld from 14 March to 15 December 2024, 317 performances, and received three Tony nominations. It did not run long enough to make London inevitable; this transfer is a bet on the novel's and the film's audience here.
The theatre
The Shaftesbury's renaming for Judi Dench makes it the second West End house named for a living actor after the Sondheim, and The Notebook is the first show to open under the name.
The number that will decide this run is the 50,000 at £50 or less, because The Notebook's audience is not the West End's usual one. It is a weeping romance for people who read the book or saw the film in 2004, and that audience comes in from outside London for a show it has heard of, which is why Wicked and Les Mis run for decades and why a new title has to be cheap enough to try. A March preview and an April opening put the run into the summer tourist season with reviews in hand; that is the right calendar for a title that needs word of mouth.
Source: Playbill checked against the source
More musical news
High School Musical at Wembley Park
Disney's High School Musical had its London press night at the Troubadour Wembley Park Theatre on 20 October 2026 and is booking to 3 January 2027: the production from the Lowry in Salford, with Tobias Turley and Leonor Correia as Troy and Gabriella, Harry Judd as Coach Bolton and KayCee Stroh as Ms Darbus.
Pride at the Bridge Theatre
Pride, the new musical of the 2014 film about London's lesbian and gay activists and the South Wales miners, runs at the Bridge Theatre from 12 November 2026 to 8 May 2027. Matthew Warchus directs, Stephen Beresford wrote the book and lyrics, and the score mixes 80s pop with Welsh choirs.
Galileo on Broadway
Galileo, the rock musical from Berkeley Rep, begins previews at the Shubert Theatre on 10 November 2026 and opens on 6 December, with Raúl Esparza in the title role and Mae Jemison, Bill Nye and Neil deGrasse Tyson among its co-producers. Book by Danny Strong, score by Zoe Sarnak and Michael Weiner, directed by Michael Mayer.