Hampstead Theatre today announces an extension to its upcoming run of Tom Stoppard’s The Invention of Love. Due to phenomenal demand the show will now run from 4 December 2024 to 1 February 2025.
This first major revival of Tom Stoppard’s ‘most emotionally powerful and enthralling play of his career’ (Evening Standard) is directed by Blanche McIntyre and stars ‘the greatest stage actor of his generation’ (The Independent), Simon Russell Beale.
Priority booking for the additional week of performances opens to Friends and Patrons on Monday 25 November with public booking opening on Thursday 28 November. Ticket prices will remain the same and will include the availability of concession rates for Under 30s, students and Access members at all performances, and for seniors on matinee performances.
Greg Ripley-Duggan, Producer and Chief Executive at Hampstead Theatre said:
“With many performances of The Invention of Love sold out ahead of its opening it is fantastic to be able to extend the run like this to meet public demand. These additional performances will allow many more people to see Tom’s wonderful play and we look forward to welcoming them to Hampstead Theatre.”
In Tom Stoppard’s play, A E Housman is, as he understands it, finally dead. The noted Latin scholar and celebrated poet of A Shropshire Lad is being ferried across the Styx to Hades – but beyond the stygian gloom on the other side of the river he finds, to his surprise, the Oxford University of his youth. Alive with the academic debates that shaped his work and the friendships that shaped his life this is the Oxford of Ruskin and Pater, a place still marked by the brilliance of a recently departed student called Wilde…
Simon Russell Beale plays A E Housman and Matthew Tennyson plays the young. Housman. The cast also includes Dickie Beau as Oscar Wilde; Stephen Boxer as Dr Jowett/Labouchère, Jonnie Broadbent as Walter Pater/Frank Harris, Seamus Dillane as Pollard and Florence Dobson, West as Katharine Housman. Peter Landi as Pattison/Postgate, Ben Lloyd-Hughes as Moses Jackson, Michael Marcus as Chamberlain/Ellis, Dominic Rowan as John Ruskin/W. T. Stead/Jerome K. Jerome and Alan Williams as Charon complete the cast.
Director Blanche McIntyre will be joined by designer Morgan Large, lighting designer Peter Mumford, composer and sound designer Max Pappenheim, movement director Polly Bennett and assistant director, Matt Dann. The casting director is Anna Cooper CDG.
The Invention of Love plays the Main Stage at Hampstead Theatre from 4 December 2024 to 1 February 2025.
Tickets are available from hampsteadtheatre.com
