Each year we can purchase tickets for both the Festival and Minerva Theatres at Chichester.
These tickets come with a very favourable discount.

Chichester Theatre Summer Season 2026

SUMMER SEASON 2026

The productions on offer for the coming months, with the dates and ticket prices, are:

The BFG  from the book by Roald Dahl

One extraordinary night, a young orphan named Sophie is snatched by a giant and taken far away to Giant Country. There she learns that human-eating giants are guzzling ‘norphans’ the world over. But she soon discovers that her new friend, the BFG, is different – he’s a dream-catching, snozzcumber-munching gentle soul who refuses to eat humans.

Date/Time  Tues 24 March at 7.00pm           Festival Theatre                       Tickets £30

Magic A new play by David Haig

Harry Houdini is the greatest illusionist the world has ever known. Arthur Conan Doyle is the creator of literature’s most brilliant detective, Sherlock Holmes. Their mutual admiration blossoms into a profound friendship, even as they discover a shared obsession with spiritualism. Conan Doyle believes fervently in the psychic world and the promise of reunion with his dead son; Houdini is determined to demonstrate it’s a cruel fraud. Which of these sparring partners will be proved right: the genius writer of fiction or the infallible magician?

Date/Time   Tues 28 April at 7.30pm             Festival Theatre                       Tickets £30

Eclipse by John Morton

In the kitchen of an old Devon rectory, the daughter who stayed and the son who moved away make conversation with their current and former partners, the milkman, the postman, the care workers. They talk about the weather, the roads, the toaster, the bins. About anything except the simmering tensions between them, as their father lies mortally ill in the next room.  Until the unspoken emotions and conflicts of years boil over.  Eclipse is a painfully funny, acute and delicate play about our struggle to communicate, in the face of life and of death. And our infinite capacity for drinking tea.

Date/Time   Tues 2 June at 7.15pm   Minerva Theatre                                  Tickets £29

Atonement by Ian McEwan

On an English country estate during the blazing summer of 1935, 13 year-old Briony Tallis witnesses a passionate scene between her elder sister Cecilia and the son of their housekeeper, Robbie. In a disastrous desire for drama but only a dim understanding of its impact, Briony makes an accusation which will fatally alter Cecilia and Robbie’s lives and many others too – for which she will spend the rest of her life trying to atone.

Date/Time  Tues 16 June at 7.30pm  Festival Theatre                                   Tickets £30

45 Years from the film by Andrew Haig

Buried for decades, the body of a young woman is found in the melting ice. A thousand miles and 45 years away... a crack forms in the crystal of a marriage. It’s the week leading up to Kate and Geoff’s wedding anniversary and preparations for the party are in full swing. As they choose the music for their first dance, a letter from Switzerland quietly shatters their world. Is the past another country? Or are the secrets in the attic of our memory destined to return?  Starring Geraldine James.

Date/Time Tues 7 July at 7.15pm      Minerva Theatre                                  Tickets £29

My Fair Lady

Lerner and Loewe’s glorious evergreen musical My Fair Lady _ with an overflowing bouquet of ravishing songs including The Rain in Spain, I Could Have Danced All Night, With a Little Bit of Luck and Wouldn’t it be Loverly – has never before, been produced at Chichester.

With its sparkling dialogue, brilliant lyrics, witty story and gorgeous costumes, this 20th century masterpiece has been described as the perfect musical.

Date/Time  Tues 21 July at 7.30pm   Festival Theatre                                   Tickets £35

Atlantis by Emily White

In a small coastal village in Wales, Bryn and Gwen learn they will be forced to abandon their cherished home in the face of rising seawater. Their crisis rekindles Gwen’s crusading spirit cradle in The Greenham Common protests in the 1980s.

Emily White’s lyrical, deeply touching and thought-provoking play, follows four generations as they discover the cost of saving their home – and the planet

Date/Time  Tues 11 Aug at 7.15pm   Minerva Theatre                                  Tickets £29

A Small and Quiet Light by Stephanie Street

This play is based on the life of Noor-un-Nisa Inayat Kahn (1914 – 1944), an extraordinarily courageous woman who paid the ultimate price for her heroic fight against fascism.

As one of the secret agents of British Special Operations Executive- and the first female operator to be sent undercover to France- she has evaded capture far longer than most. But now she has been betrayed.

Date/Time  Tues 1 Sep at  7.15pm     Minerva Theatre                                  Tickets £29

A Midsummer Night’s Dream by William Shakespeare

Staring comedian and satirist Munya Chawawa making his theatrical debut as Bottom.  Join CFT in the exuberant, enchanted world of Shakespeare’s magical comedy.  Kicking back against the rules imposed by their stuffy elders, four spirited young lovers take off to a forest thronged with mischievous creatures who march to a different beat.  Set in the Sussex raves of the 1990’s for a riotously colourful new production.

Date/Time  Tues 29 Sep at  7.30pm   Festival Theatre                                   Tickets £30

Antigone Exits by Nina Segal

Antigone’s brother has died in a bloody civil war. The king – her uncle-has forbidden anyone to bury the body, Antigone is going to bury the body anyway.  Ancient Greece crashes into the contemporary, as Sophocles’ classic tragedy shines a scorching light onto our current world.

Date/Time  Tues 13 Oct at  7.15pm   Minerva Theatre                                  Tickets £29

Booking Procedure

In order to receive the generous discount on our tickets there is a minimum order for each show of 8 tickets and, additionally, we are restricted to Mondays and Tuesdays.  Often there are no performances on Mondays.  Hopefully we will meet the minimum numbers but if we do not then we will be unable to book seats.  Please email your booking requirements to me, Janette Edmondson, at gildenburgh@gmail.com.  The closing date and time for bookings is Wednesday 25 February at 6.00pm.  This is a short timeframe so please don’t hesitate or delay.  Once the order has been confirmed I will email you individually with confirmation, details of payment and a request for a sae to allow your tickets to be sent to you.  Payment is done online directly to the u3a bank account.  Full details will be in the email.

Enjoy the show!!!

Janette

Last Updated on 15th February 2026