Alan Ayckbourn's 92nd play looks to the future

Ayckbourn's 92nd play is a cautionary examination about what's human and what isn't.

Sir Alan Ayckbourn's 92nd play is one of the highlights of the Stephen Joseph Theatre's 2026 season.

The record-breaking master playwright's The Trial of Romeo Oscar (September 4-October 3) is set in the year 2194, when military-issue android Romeo Oscar is on trial for murder.

The first non-human to be tried in a court of law the case raises the obvious question: what makes us human?

The rest of the season features Handbagged (July 31-August 29), Moira Buffini's comedy that imagines what happened behind closed palace doors when two of the world's most powerful women - Elizabeth II and PM Margaret Thatcher - met once a week from 1979-1990. Did they ever find common ground, or did their stiff upper lips reign supreme?

Puss in Boots, adapted by Nick Lane (December 5-31) brings us Sam, the unluckiest boy in Scarbarocia. He is small, shy, no good at anything and allergic to everything, so when his parents give him a cat for Christmas, he's afraid he’ll sneeze himself into New Year. But his life is about to get a whole lot more exciting...

The Scarborough theatre recently announced it would also be producing musical whodunnit Murder for Two (March 28-April 18), and Calendar Girls the Musical (June 27-July 25).

In addition, the SJT will hold its annual special fundraising event (September 18-20). Fans of the theatre’s director emeritus, Sir Alan Ayckbourn, can enjoy Welcome to Pendon, a reference to the fictional town which is the setting for many of his shows.

The weekend will start with Backstage Secrets, during which designers, stage managers and technicians who have worked at the SJT over the years will guide the audience through the process of putting on a show. On the Sunday afternoon, there will be a rehearsed reading of Ayckbourn’s Welcome to the Family - paradoxically one of the few Ayckbourn plays that didn’t start life at the SJT (it premiered at the Old Laundry Theatre in Bowness-on-Windermere in 2023).

Seven more new visiting shows have also been announced for 2026. They include Frozen Light: The Ancient Oak of Baldor (March 3,4), a multi-sensory experience for audiences with profound and multiple learning disabilities and their companions; Meet Fred (March 13,14), after 10 years and more than 20 countries, the darkly funny, internationally acclaimed satire returns, with Fred the puppet fighting for his independence with his Puppetry Living Allowance under threat, and Doris the Dormouse (April 7,8, for ages three and over) - Doris the Dormouse is preparing for her first winter alone with the cold fast approaching, in a show about kindness, change, and what’s possible with a little help from friends.

The visiting shows continue with The Freshwater Five (May 1), in which five fishermen are involved with £53 million worth of cocaine. Are they innocent fishermen or international drug smugglers? Then Dial 1 for UK (May 27) relates how Indian call-centre worker Uday Kumar fantasises about being British and gets the chance to be just that.

Also on the visitors' list are comedian Daniel Foxx in his show How Lovely (May 30), and Alfie Moore in Acopalypse Now (June 13) asks if we're on the road to hell - and can we avoid the potholes? 

Shows from the theatre's youth companies (The Wind in the Willows in February, A Night at the Movies in April and Woyzeck in May offer a trio of finely-wrought plays, the last of them a mini-masterpiece, for audiences to get their teeth into.

More info and tickets here