The Book Thief musical heads to London's Lyric Hammersmith in summer 2027
The stage musical The Book Thief will open in London next summer, at the Lyric Hammersmith Theatre in west London. WhatsOnStage reported the run on Tuesday 27 October 2026.
The show runs from 24 July to 28 August 2027. Press night, the first performance that critics are invited to see, is on 30 July 2027. A press night is the point at which reviews are usually written, so it is the date most theatre followers watch for.
The musical is based on Markus Zusak's novel The Book Thief, a bestseller about a girl in Nazi Germany who steals books and shares them with the people around her. The music and lyrics are by Elyssa Samsel and Kate Anderson. The libretto, meaning the spoken script that carries the story between the songs, is by Jodi Picoult and Timothy Allen McDonald.
Tom Jackson Greaves is the director for the Lyric run. Greaves will shape how the production is staged, from the performances to the set and movement.
The Lyric production is a co-production. That means several companies share the work and the cost of putting it on. The partners are the Lyric Hammersmith Theatre, DEM Productions and Writers' Cage with Andrew Paradis, with Bethany Cooper Productions also involved in association.
The show has been seen in London before. An earlier UK production, the Original 2023 UK Cast Recording, was made available as a album in March 2025, according to BroadwayWorld. Lotte Wakeham directed that earlier production. Fans of the recording will have a chance to hear the songs again before the new run opens.
The Lyric is a producing house in west London, which means it often develops and stages its own work and partners on others. A summer run of this length gives audiences a long window to book. Tickets, prices and cast details had not been announced.
For anyone who knows the novel, the announcement is a chance to see the story played live. For anyone who does not, the book is a good place to start, and the stage version will be playing in Hammersmith from late July next year.
