Royal Exchange to stage Munich air disaster play for 70th anniversary

Munichs, 70 years on

The Royal Exchange Theatre in Manchester will stage the world premiere of Munichs, a stage version of David Peace's novel about the 1958 Munich air disaster, from 28 January to 12 March 2028. The 70th anniversary of the crash, on 6 February 2028, falls in the middle of the run.

The play has been adapted for the stage by Ben Power and will be directed by Selina Cartmell, the Royal Exchange's artistic director and co-chief executive. The theatre describes Power as a Tony award-winning playwright and a Manchester United fan since birth, and Peace, the author, as a former student of Manchester Polytechnic.

In its own description of the production, the theatre says the play gives a voice to the survivors and the victims, their families and friends, and the players, journalists and supporters caught up in the crash and its aftermath. It calls it the story of the ones who did not come back and the ones who did, and says the play asks "how do any of us go on?"

Munichs is the last of eight productions in the theatre's 2027-28 season, which was announced on 20 October 2026 and runs from 20 March 2027 to 12 March 2028. The season also brings the West End star and soul singer Beverley Knight to Manchester as Beatrice in Much Ado About Nothing, a new Simon Stephens play set in Stockport, a Christmas production of Guys and Dolls and the reopening of the theatre's studio, which has been closed since the Covid pandemic.

Mark Brown reported this first for The Guardian. Checked against Royal Exchange Theatre: 2027-28 season.

The crash and the novel

On 6 February 1958, the chartered plane carrying Manchester United home from a European Cup quarter-final against Red Star Belgrade crashed while trying to take off from a snowy runway at Munich, where it had stopped to refuel. United had drawn 3-3 in Belgrade the day before to go through 5-4 on aggregate. Twenty of the 44 people on board died at the scene and three more died later in hospital, as Anthony Cummins noted in his review of the novel for The Guardian. Among the 23 dead were eight United players, three of the club's staff and eight journalists, The Guardian's Mark Brown reported.

One of those journalists was Donny Davies, the Manchester Guardian's chief football correspondent, whose report of the Belgrade match was the last thing he wrote. Richard Williams told his story for The Guardian on the 60th anniversary in 2018. The other reporters killed included Frank Swift of the News of the World, who had played more than 500 games for Manchester City and won 33 England caps.

Bobby Charlton survived. He was thrown clear of the burning wreck still strapped into his seat, and he was back playing for United 23 days later, according to The Guardian's obituary of him by Gavin McOwan in 2023. With the manager Matt Busby in hospital, his assistant Jimmy Murphy took a patched-up team of youth players, quick signings and crash survivors to the FA Cup final within three months of the disaster, where they lost 2-0 to Bolton Wanderers. Ten years after Munich, Charlton lifted the European Cup at Wembley as captain.

Peace's novel, published by Faber in 2024, follows those three months after the crash from the point of view of dozens of the people involved: players, journalists and families. It covers the funerals, the questions over why the plane crashed, the goalkeeper Harry Gregg's torment after saving fellow passengers and the way United completed the season. It is the third of his novels built around football managers, after The Damned Utd, about Brian Clough, and Red or Dead, about Bill Shankly.

The title is itself pointed. "Munichs" is a taunt some rival fans still aim at United supporters, and Cummins wrote that Peace's afterword challenges readers to finish the book and still use the word as a slur. Cartmell told The Guardian the stage version would explore what she called the religion of football, and how a club, a community and a country were all changed by what happened that day.

Peace on stage

Munichs will be the third of Peace's football novels to reach the stage in a city tied to its story. The Damned United was staged in Leeds and Derby in 2016, and Red or Dead opened at the Royal Court in Liverpool in March 2025, with the film and television actor Peter Mullan as Shankly and a 52-strong ensemble, as Chris Wiegand reported in his review for The Guardian.

That production used a community company who moved between narrators, chorus and supporters on the Kop, Wiegand wrote. How the Royal Exchange stages the many voices of Munichs, a novel built on lists of names, roads and teams, is one of the open questions about the production. The theatre has not yet announced a cast.

Beverley Knight and Much Ado About Nothing

Before Munichs, the autumn of 2027 brings Beverley Knight to the theatre as Beatrice in Much Ado About Nothing, from 17 September to 24 October 2027. It is a co-production between the Royal Exchange and Talawa Theatre Company, which the theatre describes as the most recognisable Black British theatre company, with 40 years of work behind it.

The director, Michael Buffong, has moved Shakespeare's comedy to Trinidad just after the end of the Second World War, which the theatre calls a society on the cusp of transformation, with the music and spirit of the Caribbean running through it. Knight won an Olivier award for her West End work and is one of the best-known voices in British soul.

A new Simon Stephens play in Stockport

The summer show is the world premiere of The First Blue Thing by Simon Stephens, the Olivier and Tony award-winning writer, from 18 June to 25 July 2027. Directed by Cartmell, it is presented as part of Manchester International Festival 2027, in association with Factory International.

It is a reworking of the Greek myth of Phaedra, the princess who falls in love with her stepson, with terrible consequences. Stephens has set it in Stockport, his home town, as The Guardian reported. The theatre places the action around the kitchen table of a large, cluttered Edwardian house in Heaton Moor, with Phaedra as the matriarch of a family haunted by history and mistakes passed down the generations. Leslie Travers designs the set and costumes.

The rest of the season

The season opens on 20 March 2027 with Brian Friel's Faith Healer, which runs until 18 April. Friel's play turns on what happened one August evening at a pub in Ballybeg, and on faith, doubt and self-belief. It is directed by Emma Baggott, the theatre's associate director, who the theatre says will draw on the Celtic tradition of storytelling, with design by Peter Butler.

Riot, by the Irish company THISISPOPBABY, has its UK premiere from 27 May to 6 June 2027 after ten years of international success. The theatre describes it as a mix of theatre, circus, acrobatics, spoken word and club night, starring Panti Bliss, with spoken word by Emmet Kirwan and a surprise guest each night. It is created and directed by Jennifer Jennings and Phillip McMahon.

Guys and Dolls is the Christmas musical, from 19 November 2027 to 9 January 2028. Frank Loesser's show, with a script by Jo Swerling and Abe Burrows adapted from Damon Runyon's The Idyll of Miss Sarah Brown, is set among gamblers and missionaries in 1950s New York and includes Luck Be a Lady and Sit Down, You're Rockin' the Boat. It is directed by Natalie Abrahami.

Before the new season begins, the theatre's current programme has David Threlfall in King Lear until 15 November 2026, then the musical A Little Night Music from 5 December 2026 to 30 January 2027, and Shooters from 12 February to 13 March 2027.

The studio reopens

The theatre's 100-seat studio, closed since March 2020, reopens in spring 2027. Cartmell told The Guardian the closure had been a real loss to Manchester, and that reopening it would let the theatre nurture local talent and tell urgent stories.

The first studio show is Talking to Boys by Abbi Greenland, a co-founder of the feminist theatre company RashDash, from 8 April to 8 May 2027, directed by Sam Pritchard. It follows what happens to one woman's mind through 14 conversations with the men in her life, from the school yard to the empty nest, and was shortlisted for the 2025 Bruntwood Prize for Playwriting.

It is followed from 13 May to 5 June by R Lady's, a world premiere by the Mancunian writer Daisy Miles, who won the Original New Voice award in the 2025 Bruntwood North West prize. Set in the playground of a Catholic primary school in Stockport, it is directed by Elin Schofield.

The studio reopening coincides with a six-week closure of the main 750-seat theatre for refurbishment, including new seats to replace ones that have been in place for 30 years, The Guardian reported.

Two years on from a damaging row

The season is the clearest statement yet of where Cartmell wants to take the theatre after one of the biggest crises in its 50-year history. She took over two years ago, in the crisis that followed the cancellation of the theatre's production of A Midsummer Night's Dream in September 2024.

That production, a modern retelling set in contemporary Manchester and directed by Stef O'Driscoll, was due to run that autumn. Its first performances were pulled, with ticket holders told of technical issues and a cast injury, and the whole run was then cancelled. The Manchester Evening News reported that the dispute was over a song involving the audience that referenced transgender rights and included the phrase "free Palestine", which the theatre had asked to be cut and which the director and cast wanted to keep, Lanre Bakare reported for The Guardian.

An independent review, partly published in March 2025, found that the theatre's management had not censored the production but admitted significant systemic organisational and leadership failures. The arts union Equity and Stage Directors UK, the directors' union, both criticised the review for falling short, and the theatre's chief executive at the time, Stephen Freeman, resigned soon afterwards, citing personal reasons. O'Driscoll spoke of growing fear-driven decision-making in the arts.

Cartmell told The Guardian the board at the time had taken full responsibility, that all the review's recommendations were now in place and that artists were back at the centre of the theatre. She said she wanted the Royal Exchange to be "brave and fearless", with northern stories of international reach and risks taken in what she called the pioneering spirit of Manchester.

The building

The theatre itself is one of the most unusual in Britain. When the Royal Exchange finally stopped trading in 1968, its listed hall could not be put to conventional use, so the architects built a theatre inside it: a seven-sided theatre-in-the-round in a steel and glass module, inspired by Nasa's lunar lander, with all 750 seats within 10 metres of the centre of the stage. It was opened by Laurence Olivier in 1976 and was damaged in the 1996 IRA bomb in Manchester city centre, according to The Guardian's obituary of Axel Burrough, one of its designers, who died in 2026.

Every one of the season's main-house shows will be played in the round, which is part of why a story like Munichs, told by a crowd of voices, suits the space.

Booking

All eight shows are listed on the Royal Exchange's own website, which is where tickets are sold. The theatre lists standard tickets for the main-house shows from £12, and from £15 for Guys and Dolls, with studio tickets at £25 and a £2 charge on each order. It also sells a season pass, the Exchange Pass, for £50, which gives priority booking and discounts on up to four tickets.

Munichs carries an age guidance of 14 and over. The theatre lists audio-described and captioned performances for each production, including for Munichs on 4 March 2028.

These shows are booked through the theatre. If any of them transfer to other venues after Manchester, we will cover that here.