Hampstead Theatre announces four new shows including Pulitzer Prize-nominated ”Sons of the Prophet”

Four new productions have been revealed for the Hampstead Theatre’s ongoing season.

Artistic director Roxana Silbert said: “Our autumn/winter season celebrates Hampstead Theatre’s cosmopolitan roots with a range of international playwrights from Scotland to the USA, Northern Ireland to France and some great homegrown talent in between.

“Stephen Karam’s The Humans was playing at Hampstead when I was applying for the job of artistic director and I was blown away by it. So it’s a privilege to be producing Sons of the Prophet directed by the brilliant Bijan Sheibani. Meanwhile our Downstairs Christmas show The Art of Illusion by Alexis Michalik has been playing in Paris since 2014, having won a clutch of Molières, and started off in a studio not unlike ours.

“One of the joys of running a new writing theatre is seeing writers develop and I’m delighted that having produced her first ever play, Either, and following a highly successful run of her second play The Animal Kingdom, we will be producing Ruby Thomas’ first Main House show Linck and Mülhahan.

“And following the tradition of the studio being a launching pad for playwrights, we are introducing Michael John O’Neill to London audiences with his first full length play Akedah.”

Karam’s play, making its European premiere, runs from Friday 2 December until Saturday 14 January and is directed by Bijan Sheibani. It follows a gay American-Lebanese Maronite Christian in rural Pennsylvania and was nominated for the Pulitzer Prize and won the Drama Critics Circle Award for Best Play in 2012. Casting and creatives are to be revealed.

After this, the main stage will host the world premiere of Ruby Thomas’ Linck and Mülhahn. Directed by Owen Horsley, the 18th century Prussian love story runs from Friday 27 January to Saturday 4 March 2023.

In the downstairs space, Alexis Michalik will bring his award-winning play The Art of Illusion to the theatre from 17 December to 28 January. After this will come Michael John O’Neill’s Akedah, which won the Bruntwood Prize Original New Voice Award in 2019. It runs from 10 February to 18 March.