The full cast has been revealed for The Standard of Living, the new play from James Graham coming to the West End this September. Previously announced star Rory Kinnear will be joined by Thomas Flynn and more.
Award-winning playwright and screenwriter James Graham (Dear England, Punch, Sherwood) will debut his brand-new play The Standard of Living in the West End and the full cast has now been revealed. Joining the previously announced Rory Kinnear are Thomas Flynn, Laurie Kynaston, Pip Carter and more.
Olivier Award winning Kinnear will star as the radical economist John Maynard Keynes, one of the twentieth century’s greatest thinkers and member of the influential Bloomsbury Group.
The Standard of Living is funny and deeply moving portrait of the man who dared to imagine something better.
View live availability for The Standard of Living here
The cast of The Standard of Living
The full cast has been announced for the upcoming West End production and will include:
- Rory Kinnear (Hamlet, The Diplomat) as John Maynard Keynes
- Natalia Osipova as Lydia Lopokova, making her West End debut
- Thomas Flynn (Masters of the Sky, Bridgerton) as Keynes’ lover, Duncan Grant
- Laurie Kynaston (Spring Awakening) as Keynes’ economic rival Friedrich Hayek
- Pip Carter (1917) as writer and critic Lytton Strachey
- Agatha Enecio as Bloomsbury group artist Dora Carrington, making her stage debut.
- Naomi Frederick (As You Like It) as writer Virginia Woolf
- Claire Price (The Second Best Marigold Hotel) as Vanessa Bell
- George Taylor (Rye Lane) as economist William Beveridge.
Completing the cast in the wider ensemble is Christopher Akrill, Luke Cinque-White Dannie Norman, Xolisweh Ana Richards and Ben Warwick.
The award-winning creative team
Opening in September, this exciting new production reunites James Graham and Nicholas Hytner (The History Boys, One Man, Two Guvnors, Giant), who first collaborated on Graham’s breakout hit This House for the National Theatre in 2012. Hytner will direct the production, with set design by Bob Crowley.
For his part, Graham has seen recent success with an Olivier Award win for Punch and a string of stage and screen successes, making The Standard of Living one of the most eagerly awaited new plays of the West End season.
The new play tells the little-known story of the radical thinker who built a new and fairer financial model in the aftermath of the First World War, and who made it possible for theatre and art of all kinds to flourish in Britain.
As markets crash, old systems crumble and Britain teeters on the edge of chaos, Keynes moves between the corridors of power in Whitehall and the intoxicating freedom of a radical circle of artists, writers and lovers who are all determined to live differently.
Can art, love and human connection reshape the future before it’s too late, or is the world too addicted to wealth and power to change?
Book tickets to The Standard of Living here
Plan your visit to The Standard of Living
- Theatre: Theatre Royal Haymarket
- Booking dates: 21 September 2026 – 12 December 2026
- Performance schedule: Monday to Saturday evenings, Thursday and Saturday matinees
Theatre Royal Haymarket, London
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