Your full guide to Chichester Festival Theatre's 2023 main-house season - all you need to know

Lia Williams and Joshua James in The Vortex, by Noël Coward, directed by Daniel Raggett, April 28-May 20, Festival Theatre. The roaring 20s. A world in flux. The magnetic Florence Lancaster draws people to her like moths to a flame. But when her son Nicky arrives home from Paris with an unexpected fiancée and a secret, it sets off a chain of events which threatens to pull them all into a maelstrom.

Chichester Festival Theatre season unveiled – click here for full details

Click here for your full guide to the Minerva season at Chichester Festival Theatre

Assassins, music and lyrics by Stephen Sondheim, book by John Weidman, directed by Polly Findlay, June 3-24, Festival Theatre. A surreal carnival. And a group of people who have one thing in common: they want to assassinate the President of the United States. Some succeed, some fail. But there’s a prize for them all: a place in the history books.

Gina Beck in The Sound Of Music, music by Richard Rodgers, lyrics by Oscar Hammerstein II, directed by Adam Penford, July 10-September 3, Festival Theatre. Austria, 1938. Free-spirited nun Maria is sent away from her abbey to become governess to the widowed Captain von Trapp’s seven children. She brings music and laughter back to his unfeeling household, but the future holds more joy and jeopardy than she ever dreamed possible. Rodgers and Hammerstein’s last and perhaps most treasured musical is produced at Chichester for the first time.

Rory Bremner in Quiz, by James Graham, directed by Daniel Evans and Seán Linnen, September 22-30, Festival Theatre. A provocative re-examination of the conviction of Charles Ingram, ‘the Coughing Major’, his wife Diana and accomplices, for duping the world’s most popular TV quiz show, Who Wants To Be A Millionaire, out of £1,000,000. Another chance to see James Graham’s smash-hit comedy, which premiered at Chichester in 2017.

A View From The Bridge, by Arthur Miller, directed by Jaz Woodcock-Stewart, a co-production with Headlong, Octagon Theatre Bolton and Rose Theatre, October 6-28, Festival Theatre. On the Brooklyn waterfront, where the fierce passions of ancestral Sicily linger, the orphaned Catherine falls for her handsome, newly arrived cousin Rodolfo – an illegal immigrant. As tensions rise, their story spins inexorably beyond control.

Chichester Festival Youth Theatre – A Midsummer Night’s Dream by William Shakespeare, directed by Jon Pashley, August 4-19, West Dean Gardens. CFYT offer a fresh take on Shakespeare’s bewitching romantic comedy, promenading through West Dean Gardens.

Chichester Festival Youth Theatre – The Jungle Book, by Rudyard Kipling, adapted by Sonali Bhattacharyya, December 16-31, Festival Theatre. Once upon a time a little boy finds himself lost in the jungle, in hiding from the fearsome tiger Shere Khan. He finds shelter with a wolf pack who raise him like one of their own cubs…

Priority booking for Friends of CFT opens: Feb 25 (online/booking forms only); Feb 28 (phone/in person). General booking opens: March 4 (online only); March 7 (phone and in person). cft.org.uk; 01243 781312; tickets from £10.

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