Stephen Tompkinson and Andrew Lancel will star in Stumped at Hampstead Theatre
Stumped – a brilliantly witty new play by Shomit Dutta explores what the friendship between two great playwrights – Samuel Becket and Harold Pinter – both cricket enthusiasts, might have looked like.
Stephen Tompkinson (Brassed Off, Drop the Dead Donkey, DCI Banks, Wild at Heart) will play Samuel Beckett with Andrew Lancel (The Bill, Coronation Street) portraying Harold Pinter. Guy Unsworth (Bring It On, South Bank Centre; Mothers Do ‘Ave ‘Em, UK Tour) directs.
Before Samuel Beckett became the playwright universally known for Waiting for Godot, he was a cricketer. He is still the only Nobel prize-winner to feature in the pages of Wisden as a first-class player. His friend and fellow Nobel prize-winner, Harold Pinter, whose best-known works include The Birthday Party and Betrayal, described cricket as ‘the greatest thing that God created on earth’.
Stumped was first streamed online as a digital only production in 2022. The play has now been extended it into a full-length play and its stage premiere production at Hampstead Theatre coincides with the Ashes test match at Lord’s, a stone’s throw from the theatre.
Stumped runs from 16 June 2023 until 22 July 2023 at Hampstead Theatre London.
