Looks like Ariana Grande and Jonathan Bailey won’t “move on” from working together just yet.
The Wicked costars are reuniting and returning to the stage in a West End revival of Stephen Sondheim and James Lapine’s Pulitzer Prize–winning 1984 musical Sunday in the Park with George.
Rumors of the production had been swirling on social media, with Deadline first reporting back in December that development was in early stages and that producers were targeting a summer 2027 run at the Barbican Theatre in London.
But on Wednesday, Jan. 14, Grande, 32, and Bailey, 37, confirmed the buzz, sharing a photo in a joint social media post of themselves seated at The Art Institute of Chicago in front of Georges Seurat’s iconic painting “A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte,” which inspired the musical.
“All it has to be is good,” they wrote in the Instagram post’s caption, quoting the show’s signature song “Finishing the Hat.”
The production was later confirmed by the Barbican Theatre. It will be directed by Marianne Elliott, the Tony and Olivier Award winner behind the acclaimed gender-swapped revival of Company.
Written by Sondheim with a book by Lapine, Sunday in the Park with George centers on painter Georges Seurat as he labors over what would become his masterpiece, consumed by his need to “finish the hat” and increasingly isolated from the people around him, including his lover and muse, Dot.
The musical explores the cost of artistic obsession across generations, with the second act jumping forward a century to examine the legacy of Seurat’s work.
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The roles of George and Dot — which will be played by Bailey and Grande, respectively — were originated on Broadway by Mandy Patinkin and Bernadette Peters in the 1984 production, which famously lost the Tony Award for Best Musical to La Cage aux Folles.
In London, the parts were created by Philip Quast and Maria Friedman in a 1990 National Theatre staging.
Multiple revivals and benefit stagings have popped up since then, including a 2008 Broadway revival starring Daniel Evans and Jenna Russell and a 2017 Broadway staging starring Jake Gyllenhaal and Annaleigh Ashford. The latter was slated to transfer to the West End in 2020 before plans were halted by the COVID-19 pandemic.
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For Bailey, this revival means a return to working with Elliott, who directed him in the landmark West End production of Company. His rapid-fire performance of “Getting Married Today” in that show earned him an Olivier Award in 2019. A year later, he appeared in Bridgerton, the Netflix series that catapulted him into a household name.
PEOPLE’s reigning Sexiest Man Alive made his stage debut as Gavroche in Les Misérables at the age of 8. Other stage credits include Cock, Richard II and The Last Five Years.
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Grande, meanwhile, began her career on Broadway as a teenager in the musical 13 in 2008, before landing a supporting role 2010’s Victorious. She’d go on to lead her own spinoff series, Sam & Cat in 2013, before launching her career as one of the world’s biggest pop stars.
Sunday in the Park with George will mark both Grande’s first stage role in nearly two decades, and her first time ever on a West End stage.
Of course, musicals aren’t foreign for Grande. She starred on screen in 2016’s Hairspray Live! before nabbing the role of Glinda in the film adaptation of the Broadway hit Wicked (opposite Bailey as Glinda’s love interest, Fiyero). The second installment, Wicked: For Good, is in theaters now.
It was on that set where Grande and Baiely became fast friends. They previously told PEOPLE they bonded thanks to their theater kids roots.
“We were both very theater children in the room,” said Grande. “I mean incessant.” added Bailey.
Meanwhile, prior to Sunday in the Park with George, Grande will hit the road for her 2026 Eternal Sunshine tour. During a recent visit to Good Hang with Amy Poehler, she teased the concerts may be her last time on the road.
“I’m very excited to do this small tour. But I think it might not happen again for a long, long, long, long time,” she said. “I’m going to give it my all … I think that’s why I’m doing it. Because I’m like, one last hurrah. For now.”
