Tom Littler News

There’s a certain gravitas that follows Hamlet, a reverence that seems to accompany the great Dane alone. When you happen to have a centuries-old church at hand for Shakespeare’s greatest tragedy, this happenstance only grows. Freddie Fox stars at the Prince and Holy Trinity Church in Guildford acts as “most excellent canopy”. Director Tom Littler’s first take on the most dysfunctional of Danish families comes off as tentative rather than assured, never quite fully coming into itself. 

Jermyn Street Theatre has announced the cast for the second production of its Outsiders Season, the world premiere of award-winning playwright Crystal Skillman's Rain and Zoe Save the World.

Jermyn Street Theatre has announced the cast of the opening production of its Outsiders Season, Stephen Dolginoff's Thrill Me: The Leopold and Loeb Story.

Oh, how life changes in 20 months. Not quite two years, not quite one and a half. In March 2020, artistic director of Jermyn Street Theatre Tom Littler teamed up with Michael Pennington to deliver Shakespeare’s swansong. That production played for six performances before closing down due to the  “unprecedented times” we’re still dealing with. It was this critic’s last show before theatres closed down and everything changed.

Today, Jermyn Street Theatre announces its Spring 2022 season. The Outsiders Season, which runs from mid-January to early July, features a World premiere by one of the UK's most respected playwrights, two European premieres, one London premiere and an eagerly awaited transfer of a critically praised musical thriller.

On November 25, Michael Pennington will pick up his staff and books and don his robes once more, to return to the Jermyn Street Theatre stage to play Prospero in this critically hailed production of Shakespeare’s final play. 

This November, Jermyn Street Theatre continues its association with the work of Samuel Beckett with the 45th anniversary staging of his play Footfalls and the 40th of Rockaby.

Today, Jermyn Street Theatre announces its first full season since it reopened with the Footprints Festival earlier this year.  The Encounters Season, which runs from mid-September to the end of the year, features some of the greatest on-stage talent in the UK, in a line-up that includes Sîan Phillips, Michael Pennington, Oliver Ford Davies and Stephen Boxer.

“So much pain was filled with happiness, at last!” There’s a reason why we call a lengthy, adverse journey “an odyssey”. In 24 books and over 12’000 lines Homer follows Odysseus, the “Master of plots and plans” and King of Ithaca, on his adventures after the decade-long Trojan War. Across another ten years while he was presumed dead, our hero saw all his crew-mates dying horrendous deaths. He was lured by sirens, killed a cyclops, and faced a series of horrible feats.

Jermyn Street Theatre has today announced casting for its marathon performance of Homer’s The Odyssey, translated by Emily Wilson. James Purefoy (Rome, Fisherman’s Friends, Churchill) stars as Odysseus, the Greek hero whose ten-year journey home from Troy is the heart of Homer’s epic poem.

Kicking off this mini-season is an epic all-day, all-star performance, in which Artistic Director Tom Littler dramatises Emily Wilson's translation of The Odyssey as a staged reading in six parts by a company of eleven actors and six guest-star narrators.

Miranda Foster returns to Jermyn Street Theatre after her memorable roles in All's Well That Ends Well and Tonight at 8.30. Her previous work includes Hamlet (Globe to Globe World Tour), Romeo and Juliet (Shakespeare's Globe),The Merry Wives of Windsor (BBC) and Festen (Bill Kenwright). 

After opening the Footprints Festival with Biyi Bandele's Two Horsemen Street Theatre headlines June with Lucy Betts' acclaimed production of Ade Morris's Lone Flyer.  First staged at The Watermill Theatre last October, the production will run from 8 June to 3 July, playing to socially distanced live audiences as well as being streamed online.    

That night, on an empty train home to Cambridge, I wondered when I would return to London. A fortnight? Six weeks? The answer was July. I also wondered how long it would be before an audience re-entered the Jermyn Street Theatre, the West End studio which I run. The answer was fourteen months.

The fabled date is getting nearer!  For months, May 17 has loomed large in the calendar of London theatreland as the signal for playhouses to reopen their doors after a five-month lockdown - a period of closure that has, of course, been much longer in New York for the simple reason that London theaters did at least flicker partially to life last autumn.

Two weeks after announcing Footprints Festival, today Jermyn Street Theatre has unveiled its full programme of 43 shows brought together to celebrate the theatre’s reopening this Summer. Running for three months from May to August this jamboree of live work comprises an exciting combination of familiar faces and new talent.

Following a year without live in-person audiences, Jermyn Street Theatre, winner of the 2021 Stage Award for Fringe Theatre of the Year, will light up again this May as it launches a three month celebration of drama, music, poetry and comedy.  

Horrible Histories and Alan Partridge star, writer and actor Katherine Jakeways will join Ian Hallard and Sara Crowe in the cast of Hallard’s lockdown dating comedy, Adventurous, which is to be streamed online by Jermyn Street Theatre later this month.

Ros is looking for romance. Richard needs a new companion. They're a match! But the year is 2020, and dating isn't simple. From glitchy Zoom introductions, to their socially distanced first date in an actual restaurant, Adventurous follows the twists and turns of Ros and Richard's relationship as they negotiate technology, treachery…and tortoises.

An all-star cast has assembled for an online reading of William Wycherley's 1671 comedy Love in a Wood, presented by Jermyn Street Theatre, conceived and directed by Hermione Gulliford, and performed in aid of Equity Charitable Trust.