The best: Theatre shows to book now in Manchester

Narrated by Richard Armitage, audiences are invited to experience the thrill of launch, the challenges of life in space and cutting-edge NASA tech in this spectacular dome show at the iconic UNESCO heritage site, Jodrell Bank, throughout January.

Already one of the standout productions in Manchester’s 2026 theatre calendar, Jim Cartwright’s award-winning Road, featuring Lucy Beaumont, Shobna Gulati, Lesley Joseph, Johnny Vegas, and with special guest Sir Tom Courtenay on film, comes to the Royal Exchange in February.

This revival marks the 40th anniversary of the play, and as part of the experience,  audiences explore the Royal Exchange before taking their seats in the theatre.

From the writer of Absolute Certainty?, and director of Canal Street Lonely Hearts Club, Kind of Love is set in the late 90s, Labour are in power and the ‘gay age of consent’ is causing chaos in parliament. Meanwhile, Steffan, who comes out to his straight best mate on a lads’ holiday in Ibiza, starts off a chain of events that will change the lives of four teenage friends forever.

‘The sunniest of all musicals’ makes its return to Manchester this spring. The irresistibly feel-good show has thrilled audiences around the world, and tickets are already flying out for its upcoming run at the Palace Theatre.

The fantastic Opera North are back at Lowry with Mozart’s comic masterpiece, The Marriage of Figaro.

This brand-new production reimagines the mischief in a quintessential modern country home. Mozart’s music, performed live by the Orchestra of Opera North, fizzes with fun and plumbs the depths of emotion.

My Name is Rachel Corrie tells this true story, in Rachel’s own words, taken from excerpts from her diaries and from her many emails home, and edited together by the late Alan Rickman and now-editor of The Guardian, Katherine Viner.

The multi-award-winning play premiered at the Royal Court in 2005, directed by Alan Rickman, and has subsequently been performed all over the world. This production, in association with political theatre collective, Take Back, and 53Two, marks its Manchester premiere.

Winner of Best New Musical at the WhatsOnStage Awards, MEAN GIRLS is the hilarious musical comedy from a seriously impressive, award-winning creative team that includes writer Tina Fey (30 Rock), composer Jeff Richmond (Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt), lyricist Nell Benjamin (Legally Blonde) and director and choreographer Casey Nicholaw (The Book of Mormon).

Storyteller Kae revisits a psychiatric hospital in 1880s Paris, in which female patients performed ‘hysteria’ for the public as doctors went to extraordinary lengths to prove their theories about the four stages of madness.They trace the echoes to the present, feeling them linger in their own body, and perhaps get a little too caught in the story.

Inspector Morse: House of Ghosts marks the first-ever stage adaptation of the iconic detective. A chilling mystery unfolds when a young actress suddenly dies on stage during a performance, and Detective Chief Inspector Morse embarks on a gripping investigation. What begins as a suspicious death inquiry takes a darker turn when the legendary inspector, together with DS Lewis, uncovers a connection to sinister events in his own past, twenty-five years earlier.

Has there been a more fitting backdrop for a retelling of H.G. Wells’ iconic The War of the Worlds? The classic tale is reimagined at Jodrell Bank as a gripping solo performance by storyteller Gav Cross.

Delivered in the intimate style of a Victorian parlour reading at Jodrell Bank, this abridged production thrusts audiences into the terror and urgency of a world in chaos, consumed by the unstoppable force of a Martian invasion.

Blurring the boundaries between classical music and other artforms, Manchester Collective join forces with dance-theatre company Thick & Tight to present a searing live performance that draws on queer culture. Daniel Hay-Gordon and El Perry’s radical work flits between ballet and cabaret, the absurd and the disarmingly moving. At the heart of the show is Kaija Saariaho’s Sept Papillons – a set of seven miniatures for solo cello performed by Laura van der Heijden, one of the leading cellists of her generation.

The first in a series of new productions, English National Opera (ENO) and Factory International present the UK premiere of Du Yun’s Pulitzer Prize-winning contemporary opera Angel’s Bone with a libretto by Royce Vavrek – a major new production directed by the visionary theatre maker Kip Williams, in collaboration with the BBC Philharmonic Orchestra.