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More than any other major London theatre, Hampstead has been at the sharp end of recent funding struggles: its last artistic director Roxana Silbert quit in 2022 as a result of the venue losing all of its Arts Council funding.
Still, the remaining team have limped on valiantly, in part helped by the patronage of the the late, great Tom Stoppard: annual revivals of his more obscure plays the last three Christmases have guaranteed bums on seats, and the rest of the programme has been no slouch.
Following on from the first ever UK revival of Stoppard’s Indian Ink - which is about to start its run – Hampstead’s 2026 season will kick off with the world premiere of Alexi Kaye Campbell’s Bird Grove (Feb 13-Mar 21 2026), which is a sort of origin story for the great Victorian author George Eliot, following the then Mary Ann Evans as the teenager comes into conflict with her father, who is determined to marry her off.
Next up and in quite the coup, the US actor Stanley Tucci directs the world premiere of his countryman Richard Nelson’s Springwood (Jun 15-Jul 25 2026), a world premiere based on his screenplay for the film Hyde Park on Hudson, which starred Bill Murray as Franklin D Roosevelt. The stage play would seem to be basically the same idea, following a culture clash meeting between the US president and King George VI as the monarch became the first in history to make a royal visit to the USA on the cusp of the Second World War.
Finally there’s the UK premiere of David Lindsay-Abaire and Jeanine Tesori’s Kimberley Alkimbo (Aug 28-Nov 7 2026), which Broadway watchers may know as a massive recent hit that bagged several Tony Awards in 2023 including best musical. It follows the eponymous title character, a 16-year-old who gets up to all sorts of 16-year-old stuff – only she has a rare genetic condition that makes her age four times faster than usual, so she has the body of a 74-year-old. Former Donmar boss Michael Longhurst directs.
Those are the shows in the main theatre, in the smaller Downstairs studio there are three further premieres: Aaron Loeb’s tech satire ROI (Return on Investment) (Mar 6-Apr 11 2026); David Pearson’s Firewing (Apr 17-May 23 2026), about a celebrated wildlife photographer and his new apprentice; and the European premiere of New York playwright Joshua Harmon’s autobiographical We Had a World (May 29-Jul 4 2026).
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