Arts

The Tony winner, who most recently starred in the hit musical Just in Time has announced a surprising follow up project.

How will Jonathan Groff follow his critically acclaimed and Tony-nominated run as Bobby Darin in Just In Time on Broadway? By crossing the pond and taking on the lead role of Rosalind in an all-male production of Shakespeare’s play, As You Like It, to be produced by the Royal Shakespeare Company this fall.

Groff, who appeared on the cover of the November 2025 issue of T&C and won a 2024 Tony Award for his role as Franklin Shepard in the revival of Stephen Sondheim’s Merrily We Roll Along, will leave his role as Darin on March 29. As You Like It, directed by the RSC’s co-artistic director Daniel Evans, will open Sept. 26 at the RSC’s Royal Shakespeare Theatre in Stratford-upon-Avon.

In a statement, Groff said that “‘Holy fucking shit” had been the subject of the email he had sent to Evans in response to Evans’ email asking if he would be interested in playing Rosalind.

“In 2019 I went to Stratford-upon-Avon for the first time to take in the historic town and see a gender-swapped production of The Taming of the Shrew,” Groff said. “The experience of seeing Shakespeare performed so brilliantly in Stratford hit me in a very primal way.

“Since that stirring experience in Stratford, I’ve spent the last six years doing mostly theatre in New York. I am incredibly grateful for this opportunity to come back to Stratford and perform Shakespeare for the first time in my life. The early prep work I’ve been digging into with Daniel and Patsy Rodenburg, their emeritus director of voice, has already got me in a state of ecstasy.”

Evans said he had admired Groff for over 20 years, from his role in Spring Awakening to his Tony Award-winning performance as Franklin Shepard and, most recently, as Darin in Just in Time. “Jonathan has a rare ability to connect deeply with an audience. His generosity, his emotional availability and his total commitment are exactly the qualities I wanted for our Rosalind,” Evans said.

Evans added that Groff would be joined in the RSC’s production by the “wonderful” Fisayo Akinade as Celia.

“I hope to give audiences an opportunity to experience Shakespeare’s most sweet-tempered comedy in a way which is playful and joyful, and which inspires conversation about our world now,” Evans said. “Ultimately, this is a play which celebrates love in all its many forms. Love is love and, however we identify, it falls where it falls. I can’t wait for us to share it with audiences.”

The RSC announced its 2026-27 season will also include the revival of an all-female production of Julius Caesar set in a women’s prison, originally directed by Phyllida Lloyd at the Donmar Warehouse in 2012. In the RSC production, Harriet Walter will reprise her role as Brutus. The season will also include a two-part dramatization of George Eliot’s Middlemarch, adapted by Nina Raine, and a production of The Three Musketeers presented in conjunction with the theater company Told by an Idiot.

Last week, the RSC announced the imminent arrival of Game of Thrones in Stratford, with the world premiere this summer of Game of Thrones: The Mad King, a new play adapted by Duncan Macmillan, directed by Dominic Cooke, and original Thrones creator and author George R. R. Martin serving as executive producer and creator.

“The play is a prequel, taking place over a decade before the events of Game of Thrones,” Macmillan and Cooke said. “A long winter has started to thaw and, for the first time in years, all the great houses come together for a tournament—destined to be the greatest of the age. It feels like a new dawn, full of hope and opportunity. But tournaments always have a darker purpose.”