Hampstead Theatre has released rehearsal photos of Tom Stoppard’s The Invention of Love starring Simon Russell Beale.

Blanche McIntyre directs the production, which plays at Hampstead Theatre from 4 December 2024 to 25 January 2025.

Acclaimed film & stage star Simon Russell Beale plays A E Housman alongside Matthew Tennyson (King Lear, Almeida; A Monster Calls, Old Vic) as the young Housman.

The cast also includes Dickie Beau (Re-member Me; Botticelli in the Fire, Hampstead Theatre) as Oscar Wilde; Stephen Boxer (The Box of Delights, RSC) as Dr Jowett/Labouchère, Jonnie Broadbent (Much Ado About Nothing, Globe) as Walter Pater/Frank Harris, Seamus Dillane (Bridgerton) as Pollard, and Florence Dobson (A Mirror, West End; Bridgerton) as Katharine Housman.

Completing the cast are Peter Landi (Witness for the Prosecution, West End; Ted Lasso) as Pattison/Postgate, Ben Lloyd-Hughes (Kiss Me, Hampstead Theatre) as Moses Jackson, Michael Marcus (The Merchant of Venice, Sam Wanamaker Playhouse) as Chamberlain/Ellis, Dominic Rowan (The Divine Mrs S, Hampstead Theatre) as John Ruskin/W. T. Stead/Jerome K. Jerome, and Alan Williams (Till The Stars Come Down, National Theatre).

What’s the show about?

In The Invention of Love, A E Housman is, as he understands it, finally dead. The noted Latin scholar and celebrated poet of A Shropshire Lad is being ferried across the Styx to Hades – but beyond the stygian gloom on the other side of the river he finds, to his surprise, the Oxford University of his youth. Alive with the academic debates that shaped his work and the friendships that shaped his life this is the Oxford of Ruskin and Pater, a place still marked by the brilliance of a recently departed student called Wilde…

The Invention of Love runs at Hampstead Theatre from 4 December 2024 to 25 January 2025.

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Main photo: Matthew Tennyson & Simon Russell Beale in rehearsals. The Invention of Love - Hampstead Theatre. Photo by Helen Murray

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