Everything you need to know about Martin Guerre at the Old Vic, London

A seldom-seen musical from the writers of Les Misérables and Miss Saigon returns to London thirty years after it first opened, entirely reimagined by Matthew Warchus for a month-long run in the round at The Old Vic.

Alain Boublil and Claude-Michel Schönberg’s Martin Guerre began life at the Prince Edward Theatre in 1996 and has rarely been seen in the UK since. This October, it returns to London for the first time in three decades in a radically reworked staging directed by The Old Vic’s Artistic Director Matthew Warchus, with new music, new lyrics and new folk-inflected orchestrations, performed in the round. It’s one of the centrepiece productions of Warchus’s final season running the venue.

View live availability for Martin Guerre tickets here

Key dates and venue

Theatre: The Old Vic, The Cut, London SE1 8NB
Booking dates: 1–31 October 2026 (five-week limited run)
Press night: Tuesday 20 October 2026
Staging: Semi-staged, performed in the round
Tickets: On sale now

What is Martin Guerre about?

Shane O'Riordan and Liv Andrusier. Photo by Helen Maybanks — *Shane O’Riordan and Liv Andrusier. Photo by Helen Maybanks*

Martin Guerre is loosely based on a real 16th-century French legal case. A young man leaves his village and his wife, Bertrande de Rols, and disappears for years, fighting in wars abroad.

When a man returns to the village claiming to be him, seemingly changed for the better, Bertrande and the community take him back into their lives. But as time passes, doubts about who he really is begin to unsettle the village, building toward a reckoning over identity, trust and how much the truth actually matters once a life has already been rebuilt around a story.

This new production places Bertrande’s choices at the emotional heart of the show, reframing a story that’s traditionally been told around the mystery of the returning man to focus on the woman left to decide what she believes, and what she’s willing to accept.

Expect a folk-inflected, emotionally driven score and a story that sits somewhere between romance and reckoning: moving rather than straightforwardly triumphant, with real doubt built into its ending.

The history of Martin Guerre

Martin Guerre (Original London Cast Recording) — Martin Guerre (Poster for the Original London Cast Recording)

Martin Guerre has an unusually rocky history for a musical from the team behind two of the biggest hits in the genre’s history.

It opened at the Prince Edward Theatre in July 1996, produced by Cameron Mackintosh, to poor reviews. Mackintosh invested a further £4 million reworking the show, which reopened that November with a new ending and substantial rewrites; it went on to win the Olivier Award for Best New Musical and a further Olivier for Bob Avian’s choreography, running for around 700 performances until 1998. The original ensemble included a young James Corden.

Even that wasn’t the end of the story. Boublil and Schönberg remained unsatisfied with the result and reworked it again for a US premiere in 1999, with a new director, new choreographer and further rewritten score, though the production never transferred to Broadway.

The show has toured occasionally since but has had no major UK revival in the thirty years since its West End premiere, making this Old Vic production the first time London audiences have had the chance to see it since 1998, and the first time in the show’s history that it’s been substantially rebuilt again rather than simply revived.

Who is in Martin Guerre?

Martin: Alex James-Hatton and Shane O’Riordan (sharing the role)
Bertrande de Rols: Liv Andrusier (Fiddler on the Roof)
Benoit: Colin Ryan (My Brilliant Friend)
Guillaume: Barney Wilkinson
Madame de Rols: Caroline Sheen (9 to 5)
Pierre: Mathew Craig
Judge: Aaron Lee Lambert
Father Dominic: Adam Pearce

The company also includes younger performers taking on the show’s Young Martin, Young Bertrande, Young Benoit and Young Guillaume, alongside an ensemble completed by Monique Ashe-Palmer, Mali Wen Davies, Daniel Forrester, Becca Francis, Grace Galloway, Chris Jenkins, Nathaniel Purnell and Gabriella Stylianou.

Liv Andrusier leads as Bertrande

*Liv Andrusier (playing Bertrande) and Chris Poon (Musical Supervisor) perform a new song from Alain Boublil and Claude-Michel Schönberg’s Martin Guerre.*

With the new production built around Bertrande’s choices, the casting of Liv Andrusier carries particular weight. She’s already given audiences an early taste of the reworked score, performing the new song “Someday” alongside musical supervisor Chris Poon in a first-listen release ahead of previews — watch it here. It’s a striking, folk-tinged number that suggests the emotional register the whole production is reaching for.

The creators: Alain Boublil and Claude-Michel Schönberg

Alain Boublil and Claude-Michel Schoenberg

Alain Boublil and Claude-Michel Schönberg are two of the most significant figures in modern musical theatre, responsible for Les Misérables and Miss Saigon — between them, two of the longest-running and most performed musicals in the world. Martin Guerre was their third collaboration with producer Cameron Mackintosh, and by their own admission, the one that never quite landed the way its predecessors did.

That history makes this new version notable: it’s a rare case of a writing team getting the chance to substantially rebuild one of their own shows three decades on, rather than simply having it revived as written.

The creative team

*Matthew Warchus. Photo by Craig Gibson*

Director: Matthew Warchus (A Christmas Carol, Pride, Matilda the Musical; Artistic Director, The Old Vic)
Music: Claude-Michel Schönberg
Book and lyrics: Alain Boublil and Claude-Michel Schönberg
Musical Supervisor: Chris Poon

Boublil and Schönberg have described the new version as taking on “a whole new identity” under Warchus’s direction, and said they were “delighted that audiences, both new and familiar” would get to experience the show again, thirty years after its Prince Edward Theatre premiere.

Screen history

The real story behind Martin Guerre has had a screen life independent of the musical. The French film The Return of Martin Guerre (1982), starring Gérard Depardieu and Nathalie Baye, told the story straight and became an arthouse touchstone.

It was later remade by Hollywood as Sommersby (1993), starring Richard Gere and Jodie Foster, which transplanted the entire story to the American Civil War.

What the musical offers that neither film does is Bertrande’s inner life sung rather than simply shown, and this new version, built explicitly around her choices, leans further into that than the original 1996 staging did.

Why Martin Guerre matters

Actors on a dimly lit stage raise their mugs in a toast around a rustic table; the man in a black outfit holds up a goblet while another actor in a patterned shawl looks on nearby. — *Aaron Lee Lambert and The Company in rehearsals for Martin Guerre at The Old Vic 2026. Photo by Manuel Harlan.*

Beneath its romance, Martin Guerre has always been a story about a community’s willingness to believe a comforting story over an inconvenient truth, and the suspicion of outsiders that follows once that story starts to unravel: themes the original production sharpened over its many rewrites, and ones that haven’t dated.

A story about a village turning on someone once his difference becomes impossible to ignore doesn’t need much updating to land now.

It also matters as a piece of theatrical history in its own right: a show written by two of the form’s most successful writers that never worked the first time, revised repeatedly across three decades, and finally getting the kind of full reinvention most musicals never receive.

Whether it finally works is genuinely an open question, and that uncertainty is part of what makes it one of the more interesting bookings of the autumn.

The score

Schönberg and Boublil’s scores for Les Misérables and Miss Saigon are among the most recognisable in musical theatre, built on soaring, through-sung melody.

This new Martin Guerre reworks that sensibility with new folk-inflected orchestrations, moving the sound away from the original’s more conventional book-musical arrangements toward something rootsier and more intimate: fitting for a story set among sixteenth-century French villagers rather than a revolution or a war.

The early evidence is “Someday,” the first new song released ahead of previews, performed by Liv Andrusier. Full details of the reworked score, including how much of the original 1996 material survives, are still to be confirmed.

Is Martin Guerre worth seeing?

Yes, absolutely.. This isn’t a safe, known-quantity revival: it’s two major musical theatre writers getting a rare chance to fundamentally rework one of their own shows three decades after it first struggled, under a director who has spent his tenure at The Old Vic taking risks on exactly this kind of reinvention.

The pedigree involved, the short five-week window, and the genuine curiosity of a “seldom-seen” Boublil-Schönberg musical rebuilt from the ground up make this one of the more interesting bookings of the autumn, particularly for anyone who loves Les Misérables or Miss Saigon and wants to hear what these two writers sound like taking a real risk.

Book tickets to Martin Guerre at The Old Vic here