QUARTET IN AUTUMN Will Make World Premiere at the Arcola Theatre
Performances run 7 May – 13 June 2026.
The cast has been announced for a brand new adaptation of novelist Barbara Pym's Booker Prize nominated Quartet in Autumn. It is to be adapted for the stage for the very first time by 2024 Booker Prize winner Samantha Harvey and the World Premiere will be directed by the former Artistic Director of Shakespeare's Globe and the Bush Theatre Dominic Dromgoole. The production runs at the Arcola Theatre in London from 7 May - 13 June with a Press Night on 20 May.
Following the success of her novel Orbital last year, Samantha Harvey makes her stage writing debut with her new adaptation of Quartet in Autumn which brings to life Pym's wry, poignant and hopeful meditation on life through the lives of four Londoners. It is an ode to ageing, friendship and the strange poetry of everyday life. Loved by many readers and writers, Barbara Pym has garnered a cult following as one of the greatest novelists of the twentieth century for her wit, satire and social commentary.
The full cast includes: Anthony Calf (My Night With Reg, Royal Court and West End); Kate Duchêne (BBC's The Worst Witch); Pooky Quesnel (BBC's The A Word); Paul Rider (The Duchess of Malfi, Shakespeare's Globe).
The Designer is Ellie Wintour, the Lighting Designer is Skylar Turnbull Hurd and the Sound Designer is Ella Wahlström.
Samantha Harvey is the author of five novels, The Wilderness, All Is Song, Dear Thief ,The Western Wind and Orbital. She is also the author of a memoir, The Shapeless Unease. Her novels have been shortlisted for the Orange Prize for Fiction, the Guardian First Book Award, the Walter Scott Prize and the James Tait Black Prize, and longlisted for the Man Booker Prize, the Baileys Prize, the Jerwood Fiction Uncovered Prize and the HWA Gold Crown Award. The Western Wind won the 2019 Staunch Book Prize, and The Wilderness was the winner of the AMI Literature Award and the Betty Trask Prize.
Since leaving the Globe in 2016, Dominic Dromgoole has directed one film, Making Noise Quietly, and produced six including The Man In The Hat, Pond Life and Simon Amstell's Benjamin, amongst other international directing credits for theatre. He directed the Climate Change Concert film Song for Nature in the Coliseum for Sky Arts and at present he is preparing a feature film and a documentary on Shakespeare's First Folio. With his company Classic Spring, he presented the Oscar Wilde Season in the Vaudeville. Dominic was the Artistic Director of Shakespeare's Globe from 2006 to 2016. In that time, the Globe built the Sam Wanamaker Playhouse, nurtured an extensive new-writing programme, held the Globe to Globe Festival, which hosted companies from 37 different countries, and developed a national and international touring programme which culminated in a two-year tour of Hamlet to every country in the world. Previously, Dominic was the Artistic Director of the Oxford Stage Company (now Headlong) 1997-2005, New Writing Director at the Old Vic in 1997, and Artistic Director of the Bush Theatre from 1990-1996. Dominic is also the author of a number of books on playwriting and Shakespeare.
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