Matchbox Theatre, Hampstead Theatre

The show derives from a book published by Frayn last year that overlapped theatrical and literary forms. The book Matchbox Theatre: Thirty Short Entertainments is a collection of dialogues and monologues. Part novel, part play script, Frayn intended the book to be performed in what is described as the smallest theatre in the world, the "matchbox" sized theatre, being the reader’s mind. Frayn gives us the scripts and the reader we must furnish the rest, costumes, setting and tone, with our imagination. Now these scenes will be brought to life on stage at the Hampstead Theatre.
Michael Frayn: writer with many talents 
Frayn is one of those rare masters of both drama and the novel. This stage version of Matchbox Theatre will be an interesting overlap interaction of these talents. He is renowned, not only as a playwright (with successful plays ranging from farce, Noises Off, to dramas Copenhagen and Democracy), but also as a journalist, novelist, screenwriter and philosopher. And has achieved the rare feat of being critically acclaimed for both novels and plays, having been bestowed with countless awards for both mediums, including 1998 Evening Standard Award for Best Play of the Year and the 2000 Tony Award for Best Play (Copenhagen), as well as being given the Whitbread Best Novel Award for Spies (the same year that the main Whitbread Prize went to his wife, Claire Tomalin).
Michael Frayn: new play at Hampstead Theatre
Frayn has always had an acute sense of the theatrical genre and how to manipulate it. In perhaps his most famous work, Noises Off, the audience hears the same script in the first and second acts, but sees the play from different perspectives. We are intrigued to see if this latest play gives us the best of both literary and theatrical worlds, or just a dramatic book reading.