Hampstead Theatre Announces New Spring Season

Hampstead Theatre has launched its programme for Spring 2024. 

Spring 2024 will see four world premieres, one UK premiere, and one English language  premiere by acclaimed writers including April De Angelis, Stephen Adly Guirgis, Christopher Hampton and Richard Nelson alongside rising playwrights Sarah Power and Richard Molloy.

Tickets for the new season will go on sale to members from today, Thursday 23 November, and to the public on Thursday 30 November. 

The season opens with the world premiere of a brand-new play The Divine Mrs S by April De Angelis, directed by Anna Mackmin, which celebrates arguably the greatest theatre actress of all time – Sarah Siddons, the ‘Queen of Drury Lane’ at the end of 18th Century.  

Michael Longhurst returns to Hampstead Theatre, following his final season as Artistic Director of The Donmar Warehouse, to direct the UK premiere of Stephen Adly Guirgis’ Pulitzer Prize winning Between Riverside and Crazy.  

Concluding the season on the main stage is Academy Award-winner Christopher Hampton’s Visit from an Unknown Woman, an adaptation of a short story by Stefan Zweig, which will be directed by Clare Lizzimore. 

The Hampstead Downstairs programme is to include, Grud, a first play by Sarah Power, directed by Jaz Woodcock-Stewart. Sarah wrote the play last year while on Hampstead Theatre’s INSPIRE programme for playwrights.  

Following his debut and Olivier Award-nominated play Every Day I Make Greatness Happen at Hampstead Theatre, Richard Molloy returns to Hampstead and reunites with Associate Director Alice Hamilton for the world premiere of The Harmony Test.  

Also receiving its world premiere is a new play by Olivier Award-winner Richard Nelson, An Actor Convalescing In Devon, written for and performed by Paul Jesson and directed by Clarissa Brown in collaboration with Richard Nelson. 

Greg Ripley-Duggan, Producer and Chief Executive at Hampstead Theatre said: “We’re thrilled that, as we approach the end of our first year without government subsidy, we can still offer such a rich and varied programme of new plays for our audiences to enjoy.  

 “Taking the Main Stage and Downstairs together, we start with a celebration of acting and the art of the theatre through contrasting plays by April De Angelis and Richard Nelson. Stephen Adly Guirgis’ and Richard Molloy’s brilliant plays then offer complementary views of contemporary life, before the building celebrates work created at different ends of writing careers, via riveting pieces from debutant Sarah Power and veteran playwright Christopher Hampton.” 

MAIN STAGE 

World Premiere

The Divine Mrs S  

By April De Angelis 

Directed by Anna Mackmin 

Friday 22 March 2024 – Saturday 27 April 2024 

‘Stop writing? This was your first play. Did Shakespeare let Titus Andronicus put him off? An experimental tragedy about a pie? You’ve just begun’

Drury Lane, 1800. Mrs Sarah Siddons, universally acclaimed as the greatest actress of all time, holds complete sway over public and critics alike. But she is herself subject to direction from the men in her life - her bone-headed brother who runs the theatre and chooses her roles, and her faithless husband who signs her contracts and collects her fees. Siddons decides it’s time become the leading lady of her own life, harnessing her star power as the world’s first female celebrity and taking control of her own destiny – but she reckons without the absurdly comic plot-twists of a life on the stage…

April De Angelis’ hilarious backstage comedy recalls the origins of celebrity culture – before fame automatically granted wealth and power. Her other plays include Playhouse Creatures, My Brilliant Friend and Jumpy.

Anna Mackmin returns to Hampstead for the first time since directing Di and Viv and Rose, which transferred from Downstairs, to Main Stage and eventually the West End. Her other productions include Dancing at Lughnasa, The Real Thing and Hedda Gabler (all Old Vic).

The Divine Mrs S is a Hampstead Theatre/AKO Foundation Next Decade commission. 

UK Premiere

Between Riverside and Crazy  

By Stephen Adly Guirgis 

Directed by Michael Longhurst
Friday 3 May 2024 – Saturday 15 June 2024 

‘Son, that girl, she’s a nice girl, but she don’t study accounting. Her lips move when she read the horoscope – that ain’t the mark of a future accountant!’

Since his wife died, ex-cop Walter ‘Pops’ Washington has filled his palatial rent-controlled apartment in one of Manhattan’s most desirable areas with an oddball extended family of petty criminals. So now he’s besieged by the landlords, who want him out, the NYPD, who want him to settle his lawsuit against them, and the ladies from the local church, who want to save his soul…  But Pops, calm at the eye of the storm, is going to do precisely what Pops wants to do…

Stephen Adly Guirgis’ fast-moving Rabelaisian tragicomedy was a Broadway hit and won multiple awards, including the Pulitzer Prize for Drama.  His other plays include Jesus Hopped the A-Train, The Last Days of Judas Iscariot and The Motherf**ker with the Hat.

Michael Longhurst returns to Hampstead following his triumphant productions of Caroline or Change, Gloriaand The Blackest Black. His other productions include Next to Normal, The Band’s Visit and Constellations (all Donmar).

English Language Premiere

Visit from an Unknown Woman  

A play by Christopher Hampton
Based on the short story by Stefan Zweig 

Directed by Clare Lizzimore 

Friday 21 June 2024 – Saturday 27 July 2024

‘There’s this monstrous idiot – this monstrous elected idiot – who keeps telling his fellow-idiots to throw my books on a bonfire and beat me up in the street…’ 

 Vienna 1934. Stefan is one of the world’s most successful authors – widely read, universally admired, and translated into every language. His is the life of a wealthy playboy, enjoying only the finest things in life - from luxurious world travel to the company of his most dazzling contemporaries in Europe’s most fashionable restaurants. Only two things cloud his prospects: the rise of the Nazi Party, and the sudden appearance of a woman who he clearly knows… but who he cannot, for the life of him, remember.

Christopher Hampton’s adaptation of the short story by Stefan Zweig (1881-1942) receives its English Language premiere following a triumphant run at Vienna’s Josefstadt Theater. Winner of multiple awards including two Oscars, Hampton’s plays include Les Liaisons Dangereuses, Tales from Hollywood, and The Philanthropist, and he is celebrated for his translations of Reza and Zeller.

Clare Lizzimore’s previous productions at Hampstead include Amy Rosenthal’s On the Rocks and Nick Payne’s first play Lay Down Your Cross. Other recent productions includeCloser (Lyric Hammersmith), Snowflake (Kiln) and Bull (Young Vic), for which she won an Oliver Award for Outstanding Achievement in an Affiliate Theatre. 

HAMPSTEAD DOWNSTAIRS 

World Premiere

An Actor Convalescing in Devon 

By Richard Nelson  

Directed by Clarissa Brown in collaboration with Richard Nelson 

Friday 5 April 2024 – Saturday 11 May 2024 

‘It's not that I'm scared to get back onstage. Maybe my friends think that. I think they do... But it's not that at all…’ 

  An actor boards a train from Waterloo, opting for the meandering, romantic route to the West Country for a weekend with an old friend. As the Devonshire countryside slips past the carriage window, his mind’s eye is filled with memories of a happy summer spent there with his late partner and fellow actor, Michael. As the train rolls towards his destination, our narrator takes us on our own journey – through his stories and thoughts about Shakespeare, friends, his career and the trials of his own health.

Olivier Award winner Richard Nelson’s funny and compelling new play, written specially for Paul Jesson, is a beautiful rumination on the healing power of art and the healing art of theatre. His other plays include Good Night Children Everywhere, Two Shakespearean Actors (RSC) and Farewell To The Theatre (Hampstead Theatre). 

World Premiere

The Harmony Test  

By Richard Molloy 

Directed by Alice Hamilton 

Friday 17 May 2024 – Saturday 22 June 2024 

‘He says, if we really wanna conceive now, he’s got a little something he can sell me under the counter at a very reasonable price. It will not fail!’  

Newlyweds Zoe and Kash are ready to start a family. Zoe wants to take a practical approach: fertility plans, vitamin supplements and a strict diet. Kash, on the other hand, would rather follow the advice of an intriguing man he just met in Holland and Barrett. 

Empty-nesters Naomi and Charlie have been living in matrimonial bliss for twenty odd years - or at least they had been according to Charlie. Frustrated and lonely, Naomi heads to the gym in search of a new lease of life. Instead, she finds Rocco – a much younger personal trainer willing to take a hands-on approach to the job…  

Richard Molloy’s hilarious comedy explores life’s positives and negatives, from starting families, to ending marriages, and everything that comes in between. The Harmony Test is directed by Alice Hamilton, Hampstead Theatre’s Associate Director and is her second collaboration with Richard Molloy following the hugely successful Olivier Award-nominated Every Day I Make Greatness Happen, which played Downstairs in 2018.

World Premiere

Grud  

By Sarah Power 

Directed by Jaz Woodcock-Stewart 

Friday 28 June 2024 –Saturday 3 August 2024

‘Hey I know you! You’re the one that’s always in the back of the library. Like a little library gremlin. Eating up knowledge. And Haribo’  

It’s a new term at college and, for most of the Sixth Form students, all that matters are mocks, UCAS applications and whether or not Elliot Park and Georgia Smith had sex in the study room at lunchtime.   

After losing the election for student president, Aicha is throwing all her energy into the school’s ‘Extended Physics Project’ – or, as she calls it, Space Club. One afternoon, Aicha is surprised by the appearance of the usually introverted and distant Bo, doubling the membership of Space Club. Whilst Aicha is thrilled to have a mysterious new friend, Bo is distracted by the black hole at the heart of her home life. She’s worked so hard to launch herself into bigger and better things – but will Grud eclipse her efforts and pull her off course? 

Sarah Power is an alumnus of Hampstead Theatre’s INSPIRE 2022 programme for emerging playwrights. Her credits include Pig at Liverpool’s Royal Court Theatre and Mandrake which was longlisted for the Woman’s Prize for Playwriting, the Papatango New Writing Prize and was a finalist in the Hope Mill Theatre’s Through the Mill playwriting competition. Jaz Woodcock-Stewart makes her Hampstead Theatre debut, with previous credits including Paradise Now! (Bush - 2022 Olivier Award nominated),Civilisation (New Diorama, HOME Manchester, Underbelly Edinburgh) and Electric Rosary (Royal Exchange). 

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