HOUSE OF GAMES and More Set For Hampstead Theatre's Spring 2025 Season
Public booking opens on Friday 7 February.
Hampstead Theatre has announced details of its Spring 2025 season. The new programme, which runs from March to June, includes two world premieres by writers making their Hampstead debuts - John Donnelly and Chloë Lawrence-Taylor - the European premiere of a new play by two-times Pulitzer Prize winner Sarah Ruhl and an adaptation by award-winning playwright, Richard Bean.
The first of these four new productions is the world premiere of Apex Predator by John Donnelly directed by Blanche McIntyre who returns to Hampstead following her record-breaking production of Tom Stoppard’s The Invention of Love. Blanche McIntyre will also direct the European premiere of Letters from Max by Sarah Ruhl.
The world premiere of Personal Values by Chloë Lawrence-Taylor, directed by Lucy Morrison, and a new production of Richard Bean’s gripping adaptation of David Mamet's noir thriller House of Games, directed by Jonathan Kent, complete the season.
Tickets for the new season went on sale to Patrons from today, Friday 31 January and to Friends on Monday 3 February. Public booking opens on Friday 7 February.
Greg Ripley-Duggan, Producer and Chief Executive of Hampstead Theatre says, “All four productions in this spring season underscore Hampstead’s ambition to bring exceptional writers, directors and artists to our audiences. Three of the four plays are new, original works by writers making their Hampstead Theatre debut. And we’re thrilled to be working with Richard Bean again on Jonathan Kent’s new staging of his adaptation of David Mamet’s House of Games.”
As part of its ongoing commitment to forge connections with the local community, Hampstead also announces an expansion of its participation programme. With support from Camden Council those who live locally to Hampstead will have the opportunity to come together to watch, make and explore theatre.
Through partnerships with Age UK Camden, Wac Arts and the Winch, artists Yasmin Dawes, Martha Watson Allpress and Hampstead’s Participation Director Jennifer Davis will run creative writing and performance sessions for a range of local people. It will also host regular Community Nights offering a relaxed space for groups to engage with the building through tours, social events and tickets to shows. Additionally, a new course for first-time directors will be launched in recognition of the current gap in director training opportunities.
Apex Predator
By John Donnelly
Directed by Blanche McIntyre
Saturday 22 March – Saturday 26 April
"They’re obsessed with climate change. See, we’re their food source and we’re heading towards extinction. It’s causing them a lot of anxiety…"
Mia is going out of her mind in a flat with a baby that won’t feed. Her son Alfie’s getting bullied at school; her husband Joe is working all hours for the police on a job he can’t talk about; the neighbour keeps blasting music at 2am; and another body has been found in the Thames.
As Mia desperately looks for something in her life she can control, Alfie’s teacher Ana proposes an unconventional route to empowerment – and suddenly the hunted becomes the hunter…
John Donnelly’s genre-busting new play is at once a sophisticated critique of the way we live now and a supernatural thriller. Donnelly’s other plays include The Knowledge (Bush) and The Pass (Royal Court). Director Blanche McIntyre returns to Hampstead following her record-breaking production of The Invention of Love.
Personal Values
By Chloë Lawrence-Taylor
Directed by Lucy Morrison
Friday 11 April – Saturday 17 May
"Me and your Mum coped in very different ways… Scratch that. We didn’t cope, in different ways. We just about held on… And I don’t know who let go first"
Veda and Bea haven’t spoken since their Dad’s funeral; not since Bea scratched something obscene into the bonnet of Veda’s cherished convertible. But one wet Tuesday morning, Veda shows up out of the blue on Bea’s doorstep, determined to break down the walls built by so many things left unsaid. But before they can do that, there’s the small matter of the physical walls Bea has surrounded herself with – walls made of newspapers, suitcases, cutlery, commodes, keyboards and hundreds, likely thousands, of bags-for-life…
The world premiere of Chloë Lawrence-Taylor’s Personal Values, directed by Lucy Morrison, is a perceptive, poignant and witty look at sisterhood and the enduring strength of even frayed family ties.
Personal Values marks Chloë Lawrence-Taylor’s Hampstead debut. Her previous plays include When the Head Became a Cage, The Heart Took Flight (RADA) and If We Ended This (Camden People’s Theatre).
Lucy Morrison returns to Hampstead following Akedah and the sold-out production of The Animal Kingdom. Her other credits include Hope Has a Happy Meal, That Is Not Who I Am and Scenes with girls (all Royal Court).
House of Games
Based on the Screenplay by David Mamet
Story by David Mamet and Jonathan Katz
Stage version by Richard Bean
Directed by Jonathan Kent
Friday 2 May – Saturday 7 June
"What do you know about the world? You’re a voyeur. You write books, do this listening shit... Me, I hang out with these fellahs at the House of Games, and it’s so real I feel like I’m in a movie"
Celebrated psychoanalyst and author Dr Margaret Ford has a new client. Billy needs help: he's addicted to sex, drugs and, most dangerously, gambling big money at an illicit poker lounge, the House of Games. Dr Ford also happens to be in search of subject matter for her next best-seller - a search which takes her deep into Chicago's underworld and into the path of Mike, a charismatic gambler. A complex game commences, in which even the players themselves don't know the rules, their roles, or who will be left holding the trump card...
This gripping adaptation of David Mamet's noir thriller comes from celebrated playwright Richard Bean, who returns to Hampstead following Reykjavik, To Have and To Hold and Kiss Me. Director Jonathan Kent also returns to Hampstead where his productions have included Double Feature, Good People and The Forest.
Letters From Max
By Sarah Ruhl
Based on the book by Sarah Ruhl and Max Ritvo
Directed by Blanche McIntyre
Friday 23 May – Saturday 28 June
"Poetry by nature is insulated and indulgent. Only some small degree of emotional restraint keeps it from being indulgent, and some small degree of sharing it with others keeps it from being insulated…"
Max Ritvo is an exceptional young man. At just twenty years old, he’s a student at Yale, performing in an experimental comedy troupe, and writing poetry containing wisdom and insight far beyond his years. Eager to explore writing in all its forms, Max applies to Sarah Ruhl’s playwriting workshop. And in Sarah, he quickly realises he has found not only a mentor, but a friend.
When Max finds out his childhood cancer has returned, the two correspond continually - pursuing an understanding of life and of art and sharing their innermost thoughts with honesty and generosity. Based on their real communications, Letters from Max is a rich mosaic of letters, poetry, music and dialogue that tests theatre’s ability to express the ineffable.
Sarah Ruhl is a two-time Pulitzer Prize finalist for her plays In the Next Room (or The Vibrator Play) and The Clean House. Letters From Max premiered in New York in 2023.
Director Blanche McIntyre returns to Hampstead following her triumphant production of The Invention of Love. Her previous credits include The House of Shades and The Writer (both Almeida) and Tartuffe (National Theatre).
“It’s a theatrical act of remembrance and a sacrament of grief, but it’s also a comedy… as much about the life of the mind, and the work of an artist, as it is about the life of the body and the existence of the soul.” New York Times
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