Ariana Grande will no longer be appearing in the West End revival of Sunday in the Park with George, a change that leaves the delayed production with a harder question than a casting update: whether it still goes ahead at all. A representative said the star is taking a step back from visibility, and the planned role of Dot is now vacant.
The timing is what makes the exit land now. Grande is due to finish the Eternal Sunshine Tour in London on September 1, and the musical had been eyeing a June 2027 opening at the Barbican Theatre after ticket sales were pushed back for a second time to fall 2026. The production was first announced for May 2026, then moved to summer 2026, then delayed again, which made the show as much a scheduling puzzle as a revival.
Jonathan Bailey had been announced to lead the production as George, with Grande set to play Dot. The new staging was to be directed by Marianne Elliot and designed by Tom Scutt, bringing together a team with a sharp track record in London theatre. Grande and Bailey had also recently appeared as Glinda and Fiyero in Wicked and Wicked: For Good, which had added another layer of attention to the project.
But the latest update leaves a gap the rest of the production cannot ignore. One report said Grande would still support the team bringing the project to life, yet it also said she would no longer appear in the revival. That leaves the show in an awkward middle ground: backed by its best-known name, but without the performer it was built around, and still with other roles that were being auditioned this summer.
Sunday in the Park with George has a long history of returning in different forms, first on Broadway in 1984 with Mandy Patinkin and Bernadette Peters, then in London at the Menier Chocolate Factory and later in the West End. This revival was supposed to ride a major star pairing into June 2027. Instead, Grande's departure turns the next stage into a test of whether the production can be recast fast enough to survive its own delays.
