The Invention of Love

Tom Stoppard returns to Hampstead after the triumphant revivals of Hapgood and Rock ‘n’ Roll. Winner of eight Evening Standard, three Olivier and five Tony Awards, Stoppard’s plays include Leopoldstadt; Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead and Arcadia.

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…

Starring BAFTA, Olivier and Tony award-winner Simon Russell Beale whose theatre credits include The Lehman Trilogy (National Theatre, West End and Broadway), King Lear and Hamlet (National Theatre) and Jumpers (West End and Broadway). His film and television work includes The Death of Stalin, The Hollow Crown, Dunkirk and House of the Dragon.