First look images are released of Stephen Tompkinson playing Samuel Beckett and Andrew Lancel as Harold Pinter in Original Theatre’s stage premiere of Shomit Dutta’s witty new play Stumped, currently playing Theatre Royal Bath (23 – 27 May) followed by Cambridge Arts Theatre (5 – 10 June) and Hampstead Theatre (16 June – 22 July).
Stumped stars Stephen Tompkinson (Brassed Off, Drop The Dead Donkey, DCI Banks, Wild at Heart) as Samuel Beckett and Andrew Lancel (Coronation Street, The Bill) as Harold Pinter. Both actors appeared in a shorter digital version of the play which Original Theatre streamed online last year. The production is directed by Guy Unsworth, with set and costume design by David Woodhead.
Before Samuel Beckett became the playwright universally known for Waiting for Godot, he was a cricketer. He is still the only Nobel prize-winner to feature in the pages of Wisden as a first-class player. His friend and fellow Nobel prize-winner, Harold Pinter, whose best-known works include The Birthday Party and Betrayal, described cricket as ‘the greatest thing that God created on earth’. Stumped explores what the friendship between these two playwrights may have looked like.
Original Theatre’s Artistic Director Alastair Whatley said: “I’m delighted that Shomit Dutta’s new play Stumped will make the transition from a digital to live performance with a short tour and then a run at London’s Hampstead Theatre. Hampstead is just a short hop from Lord’s cricket ground where the show began its life last year. This once again highlights the potential for digital work to seed and feed live performance. After the success of our digital production, I cannot wait to finally see the show in front of live audiences in Bath, Cambridge and London.”
Shomit Dutta is a writer, translator and teacher of Latin and Greek who also reviews books on cricket and the classics. He has been a member of Harold Pinter’s cricket team Gaieties CC for over twenty years and was captain during Pinter’s final years.
Operating and touring since 2004, Original Theatre have toured extensively all over the UK. Current stage productions include the premiere of Steven Canny and John Nicholson’s adaptation of The Time Machine and the record-breaking tour of Agatha Christie’s The Mirror Crack’d. Since March 2020, Original Theatre have produced 14 digital theatre shows that have been streamed over 54,000 times collectively online and viewed in 60 countries. In February 2023, Original Theatre won The Offie Award for Best Online Production for their production of Into the Night by Frazer Flintham. In 2022, Original Theatre were awarded a Critics’ Circle Theatre Award for exceptional theatre-making during the Covid lockdowns. Visit https://www.originaltheatre.com/our-productions.
