New Main Stage now on sale
Seminar
By Theresa Rebeck
Directed by Terry Johnson
Designed by Lez Brotherston

25 September – 18 October
Press Night Wednesday 1 October 2014 at 7pm

‘Life is complicated. People are complicated. If you can’t figure that out, you’ll never be much of a writer’

Four aspiring young writers have paid big bucks to seek wisdom at the feet of the caustic Leonard – once a celebrated novelist, now a cantankerous editor, teacher and grandstanding chronicler of third-world war zones…

Under Leonard’s brilliant but brutally unorthodox tuition, competition for his approval is intense and the students clash. Alliances are made and broken – in bed and out, tactical schemes are hatched – how far are they willing to go to make it to the top?

Pulitzer Prize nominee Theresa Rebeck’s mordant comedy is a cocktail of ambition, power and lust – with an unexpected kick.

Leonard is played by Roger Allam who last appeared at Hampstead Theatre in 2007 in The Giant by Antony Sher, directed by Greg Doran.

Theresa Rebeck is a widely produced American author. Her play The Water’s Edge was produced at the Arcola in 2009. Work seen in New York includes Dead Accounts (Music Box Theatre), Mauritius in a Manhattan Theater Club Production, The Scene, The Water’s Edge, Loose Knit, The Family of Mann and Spike Heels at Second Stage, The Understudy by the Roundabout Theatre Company and View of the Dome at New York Theatre Workshop. TV credits include the hit series Smash.

Terry Johnson returns to Hampstead Theatre following his critically acclaimed Hysteria last year starring Antony Sher. In the last two years at Hampstead he has directed the hits Race by David Mamet and Old Money starring Maureen Lipman. Earlier work for Hampstead includes The Memory of Water, Cracked and Dead Funny. Other theatre work includes Oh What a Lovely War! (Stratford East), and numerous West End and Broadway shows including The Duck House, the Tony Award winning La Cage Aux Folles, One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest and his stage adaptation of The Graduate.

Roger Allam last worked with Terry Johnson in La Cage aux Folles in the West End. Other recent theatre includes The Tempest and Henry IV Parts I & II for Shakespeare’s Globe for which he won the 2011 Olivier Award for Best Actor and Uncle Vanya (Chichester Festival Theatre). Films include Girls Night Out, The Iron Lady, The Woman In Black, The Queen and Tamara Drewe for which he won the Peter Sellers Award for Comedy, Evening Standard Film Awards 2011. TV includes Endeavour I & II, The Politician’s Husband, Parade’s End and Game Of Thrones.

BOOK TICKETS