Ahead of the upcoming launch of the OVO Roman Theatre Open Air Festival 2026 – watch this space! – we wanted to share with you an update from OVO’s Founder and Artistic Director, Adam Nichols, as he reflects on last year’s festival and looks ahead to this summer.
The 2025 Roman Theatre Festival was our most successful yet.
The programme included 73 performances of 8 theatre productions and 5 music events. Feedback on all shows was excellent, with productions receiving an average star rating of 4.5 out of 5, up from 4.3 out of 5 in 2024.
We welcomed a total audience of 16,197 people who between them consumed 3,654 ice creams and 2,527 packets of crisps! The venue and overall experience, including the service provided by our team, received a 92% satisfaction rating. We employed 157 people across the season.
We are always looking to improve the Festival and we are always delighted with the feedback we receive from visitors which helps us to identify ways in which we can make the event even better.
The key areas from 2025 that we will be looking to address this summer are:
Food. Visitors have been saying for several years that they would love to be able to purchase a wider range of food and enjoy it in the beautiful surroundings of the Roman Theatre. The complicated nature of the site has always made it quite difficult for us to do this, although our trial of the food boxes from Pink Elephant in 2025 proved popular. For 2026, we are hoping to make some changes to the site layout to enable us to provide a wider range of hot and cold food options – watch this space for more details soon.
Toilets. Our posh loos have been well regarded by visitors over the past few years, but in 2025 we started to experience some challenges with the reliability of the infrastructure due to the significant increase in audience numbers. This in turn meant that at many performances there were large queues at the interval. We are moving to a different model of toilets in 2026 which we expect to improve reliability and reduce waiting times.
Seating. The move last year to allocated seating, and the addition of our new premium seating section, was very popular. However, we received some feedback about the comfort of the seats. We are investing in completely new seating in 2026, which we believe will significantly improve the experience for audience members. Allocated and premium seating, along with our £15 tickets to maximise the accessibility of the Festival, will continue this year.
Sound. The biggest technical challenge we face in the Roman Theatre is audibility and sound quality. The venue is very challenging acoustically, which is why we always amplify performances, but the topography of the site can play havoc with our radio microphones. Whilst we invested in a completely new sound system in 2025, the reliability of our old mics (which we’ve been using since 2017) provide to be an issue. Halfway through last year’s Festival we moved to a new set of mics which massively improved sound quality and reliability (hopefully if you came to see The Great Gatsby you will have noticed this) and we have now retired our old hardware and will use all new equipment this year.
Production values. We try to improve production values (set, costume, lighting) every year, but in 2026 we are going to be making an increased investment in these areas to ensure we continue to deliver the highest quality shows possible within the confines of an ancient, open air site.
Thanks for continuing to support the Roman Theatre Festival and I hope you will recognise and enjoy the improvements we will be making this summer. I look forward to seeing you there!
Adam Nichols