NEVERMORE to Open at Charing Cross Theatre

Catalyst's musical play Nevermore – The Imaginary Life and Mysterious Death of Edgar Allan Poe will play at Charing Cross Theatre from Monday 19 July to Saturday 9 October 2027, with a press night on Tuesday 27 July. Tickets go on sale today, Thursday 15 October 2026.

Written, composed and directed by Jonathan Christenson, Artistic Director of Catalyst Theatre, and designed by Bretta Gerecke, Nevermore delves into the extraordinary life and imagination of Edgar Allan Poe. The show weaves together biography, fantasy, music and echoes of Poe's own work to explore the man behind some of literature's darkest and most enduring stories such as The Raven, The Tell-Tale Heart, The Fall of the House of Usher and The Pit and the Pendulum.

One rainy night in Richmond, Virginia, Poe boards a steamship bound for New York. He will never reach his destination. Instead, the journey takes him deep into memory and imagination, through a life marked by ambition, love, loss and grief, towards the discovery that, of all the twisted tales he ever told, his darkest story was his own.

Originally created by Catalyst Theatre of Edmonton, Canada, Nevermore has been presented all over Canada and internationally, including in the London International Festival of Theatre (LIFT) at the Barbican and Off-Broadway at New York's New World Stages in 2015, where it received three Lucille Lortel Award nominations, including Outstanding Musical.

M. Kilburg Reedy said, “I first produced Nevermore Off-Broadway in 2015, so it's wonderful to be returning to the piece and bringing it to Charing Cross Theatre. Nevermore has been called “haunting” and it's fair to say that I have been “haunted” by Jonathan's singular creation – a musical play that is visually stunning, deeply theatrical and full of wit and darkness, the layers of which have only deepened through his continued work over the years. I'm very excited for London audiences to see this best-ever version of the show in 2027 and, as a co-producer of Come From Away, I'm especially proud to be bringing another extraordinary Canadian musical to the London stage.”

Jonathan Christenson said, “Edgar Allan Poe turned his own tortured life into some of the most macabre stories and poems ever written and it's this intriguing relationship between his life and his work that inspired Nevermore. Blurring the lines between history, memory and imagination, Nevermore uses poetic text, expressive movement, haunting music and whimsical design to get under the skin of a man who remains an irresistible mystery. I'm thrilled that we'll be sharing that mystery with London audiences at Charing Cross Theatre.”

The creative team is led by Jonathan Christenson as writer, composer and director, with production design by Bretta Gerecke, choreography by Laura Krewski, sound effects design by Wade Staples, sound design by Andrew Johnson, London casting by Neil Rutherford, and orchestrations by Christenson with Matthew Skopyk. Original cast character photos are by David Cooper and Key Art is by Kurt Firla.