FELICITY KENDAL, TRACY-ANN OBERMAN AND TOM STOPPARD FEATURE IN HAMPSTEAD THEATRE’S AUTUMN 2025 SEASON
Hampstead Theatre today unveils its Autumn 2025 season featuring a compelling mix of premieres and a celebrated revival. The season brings together renowned talent including Felicity Kendal, Tracy-Ann Oberman, Tom Stoppard, Richard Greenberg and Jamie Armitage alongside debut writers Nancy Farino and Will Lord. It features three world premieres, a UK premiere and a major revival.
Opening on the Main Stage in October, the UK premiere of Richard Greenberg’s Tony Award-nominated The Assembled Parties stars Tracy-Ann Oberman. A sharply observed portrait of a family grasping for stability at the dawn of a new millennium, it premiered on Broadway to critical acclaim and its run was twice extended. This new production is directed by Blanche McIntyre.
Tom Stoppard returns to Hampstead’s Main Stage, following the recent sell-out successes of Rock ‘n’ Roll and The Invention of Love, with a rare revival of Indian Ink directed by Jonathan Kent. The new staging will star Felicity Kendal who in a poignant turn will take on the role of Mrs Swan, 30 years after originating the role of Flora Crewe for the world premiere. Tom Stoppard wrote the play for Kendal and this will be the play’s first major UK staging since 1995. A Gala performance of Indian Ink will be held on Saturday 24 January to raise funds and help ensure Hampstead Theatre continues to thrive. And following its run at Hampstead Theatre the production will play Theatre Royal Bath.
The Downstairs season showcases three world premieres by two first time playwrights and a returning talent.
Will Lord makes his debut with The Billionaire Inside Your Head, a biting satire questioning the value of motivation and what it may end up costing you. It will be directed by Anna Ledwich, returning to direct her 13th production at Hampstead.
Following his playwriting debut at Hampstead Theatre earlier this year Jamie Armitage returns as writer / director with A Ghost in Your Ear – a chilling and immersive new play using binaural sound technology made in collaboration with Ben and Max Ringham.
Fatherland marks the debut of Nancy Farino, who is about to graduate from Hampstead Theatre’s Inspire programme for emerging playwrights. Directed by Tessa Walker, Fatherland is a sharp, tender and darkly funny new play about the chaos of connection.
Greg Ripley-Duggan, Producer and Chief Executive, Hampstead Theatre said:
“This is a season where legends meet lightning bolts. It places internationally-renowned writers like Tom Stoppard and Richard Greenberg alongside emerging playwrights you’ll be hearing about for years to come, and this underscores Hampstead’s enduring commitment to creative risk and original new work. It’s a joy to welcome Felicity Kendal and Tracy-Ann Oberman back to Hampstead, and I am thrilled that Jamie Armitage will be pushing the boundaries of what is possible in our Downstairs studio with his innovative new show.”
Alongside the autumn programme two accomplished writers will also strengthen Hampstead’s offstage initiatives. Playwright Simon Stephens, newly appointed Programme Director of Hampstead’s Inspire programme, will provide mentorship and development opportunities to emerging playwrights of all ages and backgrounds. And, as part of Hampstead’s Engage programme, playwright Carmen Nasr will lead a creative writing group in collaboration with Wac Arts focused on fostering intergenerational connection – bringing together younger and older participants to explore how theatre can build positive relationships across generations.
Additional shows and casting will be announced in due course.
Tickets for the autumn 2025 season go on sale to Patrons from today, Friday 30 May, and to Friends on Tuesday 3 June. Public booking opens on Friday 6 June.
THE AUTUMN SEASON
MAIN STAGE
UK Premiere
The Assembled Parties
By Richard Greenberg
Directed by Blanche McIntyre
Friday 17 October – Saturday 22 November
‘You would love the apartment – it’s like the sets of those plays you love, with the “breezy dialogue”. They sort of talk that way and everybody’s unbelievably nice and, like, gracious and happy. It’s like you go to New York and you look for New York but it isn’t there? But it’s here…’
Former movie star Julie Bascov insists on taking Christmas seriously – despite her family’s reminders that that they are in fact Jewish. Every year, she and her impossibly well-heeled husband Ben host a feast in their palatial apartment on Central Park West. In December 1980, their son and his best friend Jeff come down from Harvard to join the party, and Jeff is dazzled by the Bascov clan. But when he returns for the same occasion twenty years later he finds that much that was sown in 1980 has been reaped in the intervening years…
Richard Greenberg’s virtuosic comedy-drama was such a sensation when it played on Broadway in 2013 that it had to be extended three times. Greenberg, familiar for his plays Three Days of Rain and Take Me Out – both Pulitzer nominees – makes his Hampstead debut.
Blanche McIntyre returns to Hampstead after her productions of Letters from Max, Apex Predator and the record breaking The Invention of Love.
Cast includes: Tracy-Ann Oberman
Indian Ink
By Tom Stoppard
Directed by Jonathan Kent
Wednesday 3 December – Saturday 31 January
‘If you don’t start learning to take you’ll never be shot of us. Nothing else counts. It’s your country, and we’ve got it. Everything else is bosh.’
1930, India. Flora Crewe, a noted Bloomsbury Group poet, undertakes a journey through India for her health. Free-spirited and without social inhibitions she unsettles most people she meets, but secretly captivates Nirad Das, a handsome Indian painter.
1980s England. Flora’s sister, Mrs Swan, is visited by an American biographer trying to uncover exactly what took place on the trip – and then Das’ son appears in her garden with a painting of Flora by his father – a nude…
Satirising the self-importance of both academia and the ruling class, Tom Stoppard’s Indian Ink is an evocative meditation on art and love, exploring how creativity can bridge even the most profound cultural barriers.
Tom Stoppard returns to Hampstead after last year’s sell-out success of The Invention of Love. This is the first major revival of Indian Ink since 1995, when Felicity Kendal created the role of Flora Crewe. She returns to play Mrs Swan in Jonathan Kent’s new production.
Jonathan Kent directs in his first collaboration with Stoppard. His Hampstead credits include House of Games, Double Feature, The Forest and Good People.
Cast includes: Felicity Kendal
DOWNSTAIRS
World Premiere
The Billionaire Inside Your Head
By Will Lord
Directed by Anna Ledwich
Friday 19 September – Saturday 25 October
‘There’s a very rich man inside you, Richie. Inside that crazy head of yours. A good man. An ambitious man. A man who knows exactly what it is he’s going to do when he wakes up every morning, and a man who does exactly that.’
Rise. Grind. Hustle. Repeat. And repeat. And repeat…
Lifelong best friends Richie and Darwin are on the lowest rung of the corporate ladder, stuck in the basement together with decades of old case files to work through. Darwin’s morning routine is an episode of Seinfeld and a spliff; Richie’s an ice bath, meditation, and Jack Dorsey’s 7-minute workout.
When an opening becomes available as a Junior Associate, it presents the opportunity to fly up the ranks faster than SpaceX’s latest rocket. The only things that might prevent that awesome LinkedIn update? The voice of Richie’s OCD whose demands are getting harder and harder to keep up with, and the fact that Darwin’s mum just happens to be the CEO calling the shots.
Will Lord‘s debut play is a biting satire questioning the value of motivation, and what it may end up costing you. Anna Ledwich returns to Hampstead, where her previous credits include anthropology, Labyrinth and Olivier nominated productions of Dry Powder and Four Minutes Twelve Seconds.
World Premiere
Fatherland
By Nancy Farino
Friday 31 October – Saturday 29 November
‘Best case scenario we all go with the flow and have an amazing time and eat pies and feel connected to the place from whence we came and maybe meet some people with the same nose as us’
Only good things happen to Winston Smith. Or so he keeps telling himself. Winston loves his job as a life coach, and is even hoping to write a book to share his wisdom more widely. There’s just the small matter of a negligence lawsuit to deal with first…
His daughter Joy is tired. Of holding things together. Of pretending to be okay. And of every relationship in her life demanding more than she has to give.
The solution? A spontaneous road trip to County Mayo, in search of their long-lost Irish roots. On a converted school bus with mood lighting, questionable plumbing, and no clear plan; Winston takes Joy on a search for their past by way of hiding from the here and now.
A debut play by Inspire graduate Nancy Farino, Fatherland is a sharp, tender, and darkly funny new play about the chaos of connection, and how sometimes the only way forward is through a snowstorm on the M6. Tessa Walker’s previous productions at Hampstead Downstairs include Biscuits for Breakfast, Big Big Sky and Ravenscourt.
World Premiere
A Ghost in Your Ear
Written and directed by Jamie Armitage
A collaboration with Ben and Max Ringham
Saturday 6 December – Saturday 24 January
‘The ghost is not real, it is only in your ear…’
You watch an actor arrive in a sound-recording studio.
You put on your headphones so you can listen closely as he records the audiobook of a ghost story.
Yet not every sound in your headphones can be explained. You start to fear that the horror is escaping the world of the story and coming closer towards you.
A Ghost In Your Ear is the new play from the writer/director of the sell-out Hampstead hit An Interrogation. The audience wears headphones as binaural sound technology is used to immerse them in the auditory world of the show made in collaboration with Ben and Max Ringham.
Health warning: this play is intentionally looking to scare its audience. If you are of a nervous disposition, then caution is advised…
For more information and tickets visit hampsteadtheatre.com