Martin Guerre

Join us for our first-ever group visit to the iconic London venue, The Old Vic, as we will be among the very first to witness the re-imagined and re-worked production of the winner of Best New Musical at the Olivier Awards in 1996, Martin Guerre.

After more than 30 years since its premiere at the Prince Edward Theatre, the multi award winning musical by the creators of Les Misérables and Miss Saigon – Claude-Michel Schönberg and Alain Boublil – is returning to London’s West End for a very limited 5-week season. We have been lucky enough to secure an allocation for what is likely to be one of the highlights of London’s autumn season.

As one of the last productions during his tenure, The Old Vic Artistic Director Matthew Warchus (A Christmas Carol, Pride, Matilda) has developed and directs the semi-staged production which features new music, new lyrics and new folk-inflected orchestrations. Performed in the round, be amongst the first to see this much-loved musical reborn with, in the creators’ words, “a whole new identity”.

Set in a religiously divided village in 16th-century France, Martin Guerre tells the extraordinary true story of one of history’s most famous cases of stolen identity. Years after the young Martin Guerre abandons his wife Bertrande and their village, a man arrives claiming to be the returning Martin. Kinder and more loving than the husband Bertrande remembers, he seems the answer to her prayers… until the villagers begin to suspect that he is not who he claims to be, and their fragile happiness gives way to accusation, betrayal and violence. A sweeping tale of love, faith, identity and deception, the real-life story has inspired numerous retellings over the centuries, including the acclaimed 1982 French film The Return of Martin Guerre starring Gérard Depardieu.