HAMNET TO TRANSFER TO THE WEST END’S GARRICK THEATRE THIS AUTUMN

The Royal Shakespeare Company and Neal Street Productions, in association with Hera Pictures, today announce the West End transfer of Hamnet.

• STAGE PREMIERE PRODUCTION OF HAMNET TO TRANSFER DIRECT FROM SELL-OUT STRATFORD-UPON-AVON RUN TO THE GARRICK THEATRE FOR

  14 WEEKS

• HAMNET RUNS FROM SATURDAY 30 SEPTEMBER 2023 – SATURDAY 6 JANUARY 2024 WITH TICKETS ON SALE TO THE PUBLIC FROM THURSDAY

  6 APRIL AT 10AM

• BASED ON THE BEST-SELLING NOVEL BY MAGGIE O’FARRELL, WINNER OF THE WOMEN’S PRIZE FOR FICTION, 2020.

• ADAPTED BY AWARD-WINNING PLAYWRIGHT LOLITA CHAKRABARTI AND DIRECTED BY RSC ACTING ARTISTIC DIRECTOR ERICA WHYMA

• MADELEINE MANTOCK TO PLAY AGNES HATHAWAY

DOWNLOAD ARTWORK HERE

DOWNLOAD IMAGES OF CREATIVE TEAM HERE

DOWNLOAD IMAGE OF MADELEINE MANTOCK HERE

The stage production of Hamnet will transfer direct to London’s Garrick Theatre this autumn after selling out ahead of its world premiere at the newly restored Swan Theatre in Stratford-upon-Avon this April.  

The production will run for a limited 14-week season from Saturday 30 September 2023 – Saturday 6 January 2024 with a press performance on Thursday 12 October 2023. 

The RSC has worked in partnership with Neal Street Productions, one of the UK’s most respected production companies, producing film, television and theatre. The novel was first optioned by Hera Pictures who together with Neal Street secured the rights to bring Maggie `O’Farrell’s celebrated novel to the stage.

Maggie O’Farrell said: “It’s wonderful and welcome news that Hamnet will transfer to the Garrick Theatre later this year. I was astonished at how fast the Stratford-upon-Avon tickets sold and it’s lovely to know that more people will have the chance to see it in its new London home. It has been a joy from start to finish to work with the RSC, Hera Pictures, Neal Street Productions, director Erica Whyman and playwright Lolita Chakrabarti on bringing this adaptation into being. I have been lucky enough to attend rehearsals, and to have a glimpse into the creative process of transposing a novel into a play has been fascinating. The cast are fantastic, each and every one, and are breathing new life into the story for its stage version. The motivation, for me, in writing the novel was to give a voice and a presence to the only son of William Shakespeare, who died when he was eleven and has ever since been relegated to a literary footnote in his father’s biography. Although Shakespeare was born in Stratford-upon-Avon and maintained strong ties with the town throughout his life, choosing to return to his family there when he retired, London was of course the centre of his professional life. It feels particularly apt and moving, therefore, that a play which puts Hamnet centre stage will now move to the world of theatrical London.”

Lolita Chakrabarti said, “I am beyond excited that Hamnet is transferring, following the sell-out run at the Swan. It has been a real journey to adapt Maggie’s beautiful, deep novel, but this is a story of the joys and trials of family life, so it has been very familiar as well. This play is, in part, about William Shakespeare, but it is mainly about Agnes Hathaway, the wife who gave him three children. It is the imagined story of their life. It feels right that we bring Hamnet to London, to the streets he would’ve walked and the world he inhabited. The West End is no stranger to Shakespeare’s work, but I hope London audiences will come to see Hamnet to meet the entire Shakespeare family and discover more about the works they helped to inspire.”

This new play based on the best-selling novel by Maggie O'Farrell, adapted by award-winning playwright Lolita Chakrabarti (Life of Pi, Red Velvet, Hymn), pulls back a curtain on the story of the greatest writer in the English language and the woman who was the constant presence and purpose of his life. 

Madeleine Mantock will play Agnes Hathaway, in her RSC debut. Madeleine made her West End stage debut in 2021 playing Elvira in Richard Eyre’s production of Blithe Spirit at the Harold Pinter Theatre. For TV, Madeleine recently played Macy Vaughn in CBS studios series Charmed and Miss Clara in the BBC’s The Long Song. Other TV credits include The Tomorrow People (Warner Brothers), Age Before Beauty (BBC) and Into the Badlands (AMC). Madeleine’s film credits include Breaking Brooklyn (Montage Films), The Truth Commissioner (BBC Films) and Edge of Tomorrow (Warner Brothers).  

Warwickshire,1582. Agnes Hathaway, a natural healer, meets the Latin tutor, William Shakespeare. Drawn together by powerful but hidden impulses, they create a life together and make a family. 

When the plague steals 11-year-old Hamnet from his loving parents, they must each confront their loss alone. And yet, out of the greatest suffering, something of extraordinary wonder is born. 

Hamnet has sold over a 1.5 million copies worldwide and was named both Waterstones Book of the Year and winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award in 2020. The novel also saw Maggie O’Farrell named the winner of the 2020 Women’s Prize for Fiction; the UK's most prestigious annual book award celebrating and honouring fiction written by women. As the No. 1 Sunday Times Bestseller in 2021, Hamnet was shortlisted for the Walter Scott Prize for Historical Fiction (2021) and British Book awards ‘Fiction Book of the Year’ (2021).

The production will feature Set and Costume Design by Tom Piper, Lighting by Prema Mehta, Sound by Xana, Music by Oğuz Kaplangi, Casting by Amy Ball CDG and Movement by Ayse Tashkiran.

Erica Whyman, Acting Artistic Director of the Royal Shakespeare Company said; “I have been overwhelmed by the response to Hamnet in Stratford and the palpable excitement about bringing this beautiful and important book to the stage.

We are having a rewarding and inventive time in rehearsals and I’m delighted that we will now be able to share this emotional rollercoaster of a story with audiences in London. It has meant the world to me to be collaborating with Neal Street and Hera Pictures who have supported the idea of this adaptation from the very beginning and are making this transfer possible.

The RSC is enormously proud of the new work we make and we are always seeking partners so that we can share our work in London, most recently the phenomenally successful My Neighbour Totoro with the Barbican, Improbable and Nippon TV and later this year The Empress will be at the Lyric Hammersmith.

Hamnet is a compelling story about love. It transcends 400 years of history - a history some of us may know - and speaks with total freshness straight to our hearts. It is a story of birth, death and hope which centres characters and lives who have been left in the shadows. It is also a hymn to the unique emotional wisdom of the theatre. Lolita's brilliantly sharp adaptation carries us from the wildflowers of Stratford to the boisterous success of London theatre - and now the production will too!”

Caro Newling, Neal Street Productions said; "Maggie O’Farrell’s piercing account of Hamnet’s short life and his immeasurable legacy has found a perfect home at the Swan Theatre. To collaborate with the RSC, led by Erica and the creative team she has built to make this production, fulfils a long-held hope to make a stage adaptation rooted in the fullest possible appreciation of the story’s time, place and spirit. The appetite for this title has powered immediate plans for a move to London and we're delighted to be arriving at the Garrick Theatre within weeks of the run at Stratford-upon-Avon." 

ENDS

For further information please contact Kate Evans (Media and Communications Manager, Royal Shakespeare Company) | 07920 244 434 kate.evans@rsc.org.uk

LISTINGS

HAMNET

Novel by Maggie O’Farrell

Adapted by Lola Chakrabarti

Directed by Erica Whyman

Garrick Theatre,

London,

WC2H 0HH

First preview: Saturday 30 September  

Press Night: Thursday 12 October, 7pm

Final Performance: Saturday 6 January 2024

Performance times: Monday to Saturday at 7.30pm, Thursday and Saturday at 2.30pm

Audio described performance: Saturday 25 November at 2:30pm

Captioned performance: Thursday 16 November at 2:30pm

BSL performance: Wednesday 8 November at 7:30pm

Groups and schools rates available.

Tickets from: £25

Join the RSC from £20 online or call the RSC Box Office on 01789 331111 (Monday - Friday, 12noon - 6pm) to access Priority Booking.

Book online: https://thegarricktheatre.co.uk/
Phone: 0330 333 4815

Sign up for priority access from 28 March at www.rsc.org.uk/Hamnet

PRIORITY BOOKING DATES

RSC Gold Patrons                              Tuesday 28 March 2023

RSC Silver Patrons                             Wednesday 29 March 2023

RSC Bronze Patrons                          Thursday 30 March 2023

RSC Members                                    Monday 3 April 2023

RSC Subscribers                                Tuesday 4 April 2023

Public Booking                                  Thursday 6 April 2023

NOTES TO EDITORS

The RSC is supported using public funding by Arts Council England

The work of the RSC is supported by the Culture Recovery Fund

The RSC is generously supported by RSC America

Hamnet is supported by RSC Production Circle members Peggy Czyzak-Dannenbaum, Susan Tomasky and Ronald J Ungvarsky, and Marcia Whitaker

Hamnet is a recipient of the Edgerton Foundation New Play Award

New Work at the RSC is generously supported by The Drue and H.J. Heinz II Charitable Trust

TikTok £10 Tickets sponsored by TikTok

Maggie O’Farrell is the author of Hamnet, winner of the Women’s Prize for Fiction 2020, and the memoir I Am, I Am, I Am, both Sunday Times No. 1 bestsellers. Her novels include After You’d Gone, My Lover’s Lover, The Distance Between Us, which won a Somerset Maugham Award, The Vanishing Act of Esme Lennox, The Hand that First Held Mine, which won the 2010 Costa Novel Award, Instructions for a Heatwave and This Must Be the Place. Her latest novel, The Marriage Portrait, was published in August 2022. She is also the author of two books for children, Where Snow Angels Go, and The Boy Who Lost His Spark (October 2022).

Lolita Chakrabarti OBE is an actress and an award-winning playwright. Her debut play Red Velvet opened at the Tricycle Theatre, London, before transferring to St Ann’s Warehouse in New York and then to London’s West End as part of Sir Kenneth Branagh’s inaugural season at The Garrick Theatre. It earned her the Evening Standard Charles Wintour Award for Most Promising Playwright 2012; The Critics’ Circle Award for Most Promising Playwright 2013; AWA for Arts and Culture 2013 and an Olivier Award nomination for Outstanding Achievement in an Affiliate Theatre 2012, as well as many other nominations. Red Velvet is now on the Drama syllabus for A level, is studied at universities in the UK and USA and there have been over twenty professional productions in the USA and beyond, including at the Shakespeare Theatre Company in Washington.

In 2019 Lolita adapted the Booker Prize winning novel Life of Pi for the stage, (Sheffield Theatres, Wyndham’s Theatre in London’s West End and Boston Dec 2022), which will open on Broadway in 2023 and for which she won the award for Best New Play at the Olivier Awards 2022, UK Theatre Awards 2019 and WhatsonStage Awards 2019. Other writing credits include Hymn (Almeida Theatre/Sky Arts); an adaptation of Italo Calvino’s Invisible Cities (Manchester International Festival and Brisbane Festival); Stones of Venice, a VR film for New Vision Arts Festival in Hong Kong; she curated The Greatest Wealth (The Old Vic) celebrating 8 decades of the NHS, which was also shown online during the pandemic; she was dramaturg on Message in a Bottle (ZooNation/Sadler’s Wells). Lolita is dramaturg on the forthcoming Sylvia for the Old Vic.

Acting credits include: Fanny and Alexander (The Old Vic); Hamlet (Royal Academy of Dramatic Art), Vigil, Showtrial, The Casual Vacancy (BBC); Wheel of Time (Amazon Prime); Born to Kill (Channel 4); My Mad Fat Diary (E4), Beowulf; Return to the Shieldlands (ITV); Riviera (Sky); Criminal (Netflix).

Erica Whyman joined the Royal Shakespeare Company in January 2013 as Deputy Artistic Director. She is currently Acting Artistic Director.

As part of the season celebrating the 400th anniversary of Shakespeare’s death she directed A Midsummer Night’s Dream: A Play for the Nation in the Royal Shakespeare Theatre, a production involving 18 professional actors, 14 amateur theatre groups (84 amateur actors) and 580 school children from across the country, which toured the UK from March to June 2016. Her 2018 production of Romeo and Juliet in the Royal Shakespeare Theatre, the Barbican and on a national tour incorporated 60 young people from RSC partner schools into its prologue.

In September 2021 Erica directed Faith, a major co-production between the RSC and the Coventry City of Culture Trust. The experience was made on the streets of Coventry in collaboration with the many faith communities of the city, taking place over 24 hours in the city and online to explore how people of faith, and of non-religious world views, understand and celebrate the chapters and mysteries of our lives.

In 2020 Erica directed The Winter’s Tale which was due to be staged in the Royal Shakespeare Theatre and on UK tour from March 2020 but was postponed due to the Covid-19 pandemic. The production was finally reimagined for the screen and was broadcast on BBC Four in April 2021 and then on iPlayer where it has been seen by 80,000 people.

Erica was Chief Executive of Northern Stage in Newcastle Upon Tyne from 2005 to 2012.

She was Artistic Director of Southwark Playhouse (1998-2000) and Artistic Director of the Gate Theatre, Notting Hill (2000-2004). At the Gate she ensured that the theatre paid its actors for the first time in 25 years, and she inaugurated the UK's first award for translation. Erica is a theatre director with many years' experience all over the UK.

For the RSC: The Ant and the Cicada; Revolt. She Said. Revolt Again. (The Other Place); The Christmas Truce (Royal Shakespeare Theatre); Hecuba (Swan Theatre); A Midsummer Night’s Dream: A Play for the Nation (Royal Shakespeare Theatre and UK Tour); The Seven Acts of Mercy (Swan Theatre); The Earthworks (The Other Place); Romeo and Juliet (Royal Shakespeare Theatre, Barbican and UK Tour), Miss Littlewood (Swan Theatre), A Museum in Baghdad (Swan Theatre).

Royal Shakespeare Company (RSC)

The Royal Shakespeare Company is a theatre and learning charity that creates world class theatre, made in Stratford-upon-Avon and shared around the world, performing plays by Shakespeare and his contemporaries, as well as commissioning an exceptionally wide range of original work from contemporary writers. Our purpose is to ensure that Shakespeare is for everyone, and we do that by unlocking the power of his plays and of live performance and our learning and education work throughout the UK and across the world.

We believe everybody’s life is enriched by culture and creativity. We have trained generations of the very best theatre makers and we continue to nurture the talent of the future. Our transformative Learning programmes reach over half a million young people and adults each year, and through our Creative Placemaking and Public Programme we create projects with and for communities who have not historically engaged with our work. We are a leader in creative immersive technologies and digital development.

We have a proud record of innovation, diversity and excellence on stage and are determined to grasp the opportunity to become an even more inclusive, progressive, relevant and ambitious organisation.

We have one of the UK’s largest arts learning programmes, working with over 1,000 schools each year to broaden access to high quality arts learning and transform experiences of Shakespeare in schools. Through our national partnership programme with schools and regional theatres we target areas of structural disadvantage, including 26 areas of multiple deprivation across the country, from Cornwall to Middlesbrough. Research shows that our approaches to teaching Shakespeare support the development of reading and writing skills, accelerate language acquisition and development, raise aspirations and improve student attitudes to school and learning in general. They also foster well-being, self-esteem, empathy, resilience and tolerance and promote critical-thinking, creative, analytical, communication and problem-solving skills.

We are committed to being a teaching and learning theatre and we are the only arts organisation to have been awarded Independent Research Organisation status.  We create world class theatre for, with and by audiences and theatre makers of all ages. We provide training for emerging and established theatre makers and arts professionals, for teachers and for young people. We share learning formally and informally. We embed training and research across our company, work and processes.

We recognise the climate emergency and work hard to embed environmental sustainability into our operations, creative work and business practice, making a commitment to continually reduce our carbon footprint.

Keep Your RSC supports our mission to create theatre at its best, unlocking Shakespeare and transforming lives. Thousands of generous audience members, trusts and foundations and partners supported Keep Your RSC since 2020, alongside a £19.4 million loan from the Culture Recovery Fund, we are thrilled to be welcoming audiences back. It will take time to recover, to reopen all our theatres, and many years to repay the loan and the support and generosity of our audiences is more important than ever. Please donate at rsc.org.uk/donate

Neal Street Productions is one of the UK’s most respected production companies, producing film, television and theatre. Founded 2003 by Sam Mendes, Pippa Harris and Caro Newling, it makes distinctive, popular award-winning projects on both sides of the Atlantic. TV series: Call the Midwife, Britannia, Informer, Penny Dreadful, Stuart A Life Backwards, The Hollow Crown. Films include Mendes’ Empire of Light, 1917, Revolutionary Road, Away We Go, Jarhead and Things We Lost in The Fire. Most recent theatre The Lehman Trilogy, Walking with Ghosts, the new stage adaptation of Local Hero and The Ferryman. Forthcoming The Motive and The Cue in a co-production with the National Theatre, and currently touring the UK, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. The theatre slate is overseen by Newling together with producer, Georgia Gatti. In 2015 Neal Street moved under the umbrella of parent company, All3Media, owned jointly between Discovery Communications and Liberty Global.

Hera Pictures Hera Pictures was established by Liza Marshall, who was previously Head of Drama at Channel 4, (Boy A, Misfits, Red Riding Trilogy, Top Boy) before going on to run Scott Free London for Ridley Scott (Taboo, Before I Go To Sleep, Life In A Day). Prior to this, she was a producer at the BBC (The Long Firm, The Sins, Eroica).

Hera is currently filming Mary & George for Sky Atlantic/AMC, starring Julianne Moore and Nicholas Gazitline, adapted by DC Moore from The King’s Assassin by Benjamin Wooley, lead director Oliver Hermanus. On the film side, Hera is in post-production on an adaptation of Megan Hunter’s The End We Start From, starring Jodie Comer and adapted by writer Alice Birch (Normal People) and director Mahalia Belo. Hera’s first production, Temple, starring Mark Strong was Sky 1’s most successful drama of 2019 and chosen as one of the top tv shows of 2020 by The New York Times. The second season of Temple launched to critical acclaim in Autumn 2021. Hera also made Honour, a two-part true crime story starring Keeley Hawes and written by Gwyneth Hughes.

Arts Council England is the national development body for arts and culture across England, working to enrich people’s lives. We support a range of activities across the arts, museums and libraries – from theatre to visual art, reading to dance, music to literature, and crafts to collections. Great art and culture inspires us, brings us together and teaches us about ourselves and the world around us. In short, it makes life better. Between 2018 and 2022, we will invest £1.45 billion of public money from government and an estimated £860 million from the National Lottery to help create these experiences for as many people as possible across the country.www.artscouncil.org.uk

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