thu 22/05/2025

Hampstead Theatre

Rona Munro on writing Little Eagles

My latest play, Little Eagles, marks the 50th anniversary of cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin’s first orbit around the Earth. Gagarin’s place in history is, quite rightly, assured but little is known about Sergei Korolyov, a brilliant engineer and the chief...

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Ecstasy, Hampstead Theatre

Film-maker and playwright Mike Leigh simply doesn’t do revivals. His method of working - which involves a group of actors improvising characters and situations until a story emerges - runs contrary to any notion of returning to a play after its...

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Tiger Country, Hampstead Theatre

Playwright Nina Raine has a gift for evocative play titles. Her 2006 debut was called Rabbit, and her sellout success at the Royal Court last year was Tribes. This time, we seem to be on safari with Tiger Country, but appearances can be deceptive....

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Royal Shakespeare Company, 2011 Season

The Royal Shakespeare Company celebrates its 50th birthday season with the grand reopening of its transformed Royal Shakespeare Theatre at a cost of £112.8 million. The temporary Courtyard Theatre folds curtains on the sold-out smash hit that is...

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Beasts and Beauties, Hampstead Theatre

Once upon a time there was a free spirit called Tim, who fell in love with olde folk tales and created little shows all about spells and wonders, and peopled them with princes and princesses, farmers and animals. When he was more grown up, he formed...

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The Train Driver, Hampstead Theatre

Grave concerns: Owen Sejake in Athol Fugard’s 'The Train Driver'

Few playwrights have been so successful at moulding our view of a nation as Athol Fugard. It’s impossible to think of South Africa, especially during the apartheid years, without thinking of his Sizwe Bansi is Dead, The Island or Statements after an...

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Salome, Hampstead Theatre

Princess as chavette: Zawe Ashton in the title role of Salome

The last time I saw Oscar Wilde’s biblical tale it was performed by dancer Lindsay Kemp at the Roundhouse in London, back in the 1970s, in a production that was high on dope, incense, strange vocal drawling - and which transported you very quickly...

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The Gods Weep, RSC/Hampstead Theatre

Why is it that Method-ist actors are pretty much expected to spend months manically researching the inner minutiae of their character, but a much-lauded playwright can get away without providing any serious insights into his main subject matter?To...

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Dunsinane, RSC/Hampstead Theatre

Scottish playwright David Greig’s new play, for the Royal Shakespeare Company in their London season at Hampstead, picks up where Shakespeare’s Macbeth left off (almost). We are in 11th-century Dunsinane, the seat of power in Scotland. Macbeth (...

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theartsdesk Q&A: Playwright David Greig

A new play by David Greig opens at the Hampstead Theatre for the Royal Shakespeare Company next week. A theatre director as well as playwright, Greig (b. 1969) is one of the most prolific and artistically ambitious playwrights of his generation and...

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Edward Hall, new artistic director of Hampstead Theatre

Hampstead Theatre today revealed the identity of their new artistic director. Edward Hall will take over at the end of this month when Anthony Clark steps down after seven years in the post. “Hampstead Theatre and I share a passion for finding new...

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Darker Shores, Hampstead Theatre

Haunted darkness: the cast of Michael Punter’s ghostly Darker Shores

What’s the appeal of the traditional ghost story? Is it the knowledge that while the victims of the tale quake in their boots, you are perfectly safe and grinning like the Cheshire Cat? Or is it because the supernatural gives us a chance to journey...

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