Royal Shakespeare Company Announces Cast for US Premiere of HAMNET

Chicago Shakespeare Theater has announced casting for the US tour of the Royal Shakespeare Company's  Hamnet, based on the best-selling novel by Maggie O'Farrell, adapted by award-winning playwright Lolita Chakrabarti (Life of Pi, Red Velvet, Hymn), and directed by Erica Whyman. A co-production with the RSC and Neal Street Productions, Hamnet pulls back a curtain on the story of the greatest writer in the English language and the woman who was the constant presence and purpose of his life. Hamnet is a love letter to passion, birth, grief, and the magic of nature. The US premiere features Kemi-Bo Jacobs as Agnes and Rory Alexander as William and begins its US premiere at Chicago Shakespeare Theater in The Yard, February 10‑March 8, 2026. The production will then transfer to Shakespeare Theatre Company in Washington, DC, from March 17 to April 12, 2026, and American Conservatory Theater in San Francisco from April 22 to May 24, 2026.

Warwickshire, 1582. Agnes Hathaway, a natural healer, meets the Latin tutor, William Shakespeare. Drawn together by powerful but hidden impulses, they create a life together and make a family. When the plague steals 11-year-old Hamnet from his loving parents, they must each confront their loss alone. And yet, out of the greatest suffering, something of extraordinary wonder is born.

The original production of Hamnet played to sold-out audiences in Stratford-upon-Avon in 2023, breaking box office records at the Swan Theatre. It later opened to the biggest box office advance in the Garrick Theatre's history when it transferred to the West End and was hailed as “pure theatre gold” by The Mail on Sunday and “elegant and beguiling” by the Evening Standard.

Kemi-Bo Jacobs plays Agnes. Jacobs' recent stage credits include Coriolanus (National Theatre), The Other Boleyn Girl (Chichester), Ocean at the End of the Lane (West End and National Theatre Tour), All My Sons (Manchester Royal Exchange and UK Tour), Wild East (Young Vic), The Winter's Tale (RSC) and The Sweet Science of Bruising (Southwark Playhouse). Her screen credits include Million Days, The Letter for The King (Netflix), The Great (Hulu), McMafia, Thirteen, Delicious, London Has Fallen, The Honorable Woman, Lewis and Doctor Who. Rory Alexander plays William. Alexander can currently be seen starring as a young Murtagh Fitzgibbons Fraser in the Outlander prequel Blood of My Blood for Starz, and was longlisted for a BIFA for Best Breakthrough Performance for his leading role in Inland opposite Mark Rylance and Kathryn Hunter. He has recently completed filming on Justin Chadwick's latest feature Untamed with Emily Barber and Matthew Steer. Alexander can also be seen playing the role of Boogie in Danny Boyle's Pistol alongside Louis Partridge, Thomas Brodie-Sangster and Maisie Williams for FX/Hulu (US) and Disney+(UK). Other notable film and television credits include Element Film's Dark Windows, Dark Game with Ed Westwick, Kenny Swinney in Sky's Then You Run with Leah McNamara, Eric in Amazon's Alex Rider S2 with Vicky McClure, and Netflix's Anxious People.

The cast also includes Troy Alexander (Bartholomew), Nigel Barrett (John/Will Kempe), Haydn Burke (Ensemble), Ajani Cabey (Hamnet), Saffron Dey (Judith), Victoria Elliott (Joan), Heather Forster (Eliza), Thalia Gambe (Ensemble) Karl Haynes (Ned), Ava Hinds Jones (Susanna), Nicki Hobday (Jude), Penny Layden (Mary), Matilda McCarthy (Tilly/Catherina), and Bert Seymour (Burbage/Father John).

“We're delighted to welcome the Royal Shakespeare Company back to Chicago for this moving and illuminating production of Hamnet,” shared CST Artistic Director Edward Hall. “The play gives a fascinating window into Shakespeare's life from a new perspective that imagines in such vivid detail what his family might have been like—a valuable new contribution to understanding the family and the writer behind the plays we know and love. And it's wonderful to be welcoming playwright Lolita Chakrabarti back to CST, whose writing so sensitively brings to life the characters in Maggie O'Farrell's beautiful novel.”

RSC Co-Artistic Directors Daniel Evans and Tamara Harvey shared, “We are delighted to share casting for the first US tour of Hamnet. It's wonderful to be coming back in 2026 with Lolita Chakrabarti's beautiful adaptation of Maggie O'Farrell's best-selling novel, which offers a compelling new perspective on Shakespeare through the eyes of Agnes Hathaway and their children. We can't wait to share this intimate and moving story with US audiences.”

Playwright Lolita Chakrabarti added, “Hamnet brings to life the Shakespeare family—William, his sister and their parents, Agnes, his wife, and their three children. You will see why William went to London and discovered the theater, how his family lived without him and how the profound loss of a child gave us one of the most important plays in the western world. Hamnet is a heartwarming and heartbreaking exploration of family, loss, and the stories we tell ourselves in order to survive.”

Director Erica Whyman said, “I am delighted to be revisiting this extraordinary story for US audiences, and to be making this production with a stellar line-up of performers. Kemi-Bo Jacobs and Rory Alexander are bringing Agnes and William alive on the stage with a luminous intelligence and a profound and shocking understanding of the love and loss that shaped their lives. They are joined by a wonderful company bringing a wealth of experience and spirited invention to Lolita's searing adaptation. The play explores Agnes's remarkable spiritual gifts and her relationship with both the natural world and the future with an imaginative theatricality, and audiences should expect beautiful music, movement and sound design on Tom Piper's stunning set. This is, at its heart, an intimate story of family which finds eternal expression on the stage—to see it in the theatre is to bear witness to the astonishing resilience of the human spirit.”

Hamnet has sold over a 1.5 million copies worldwide and was named both Waterstones Book of the Year and winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award in 2020. The novel also saw Maggie O'Farrell named the winner of the 2020 Women's Prize for Fiction; the UK's most prestigious annual book award celebrating and honouring fiction written by women. As the No. 1 Sunday Times Bestseller in 2021, Hamnet was shortlisted for the Walter Scott Prize for Historical Fiction (2021) and British Book awards ‘Fiction Book of the Year' (2021).