Seminar, Hampstead Theatre

This 2011 comedy from the tireless New York playwright Theresa Rebeck was warmly received on its first Broadway outing.  It will be interesting to see if Olivier-award winning Roger Allam can match the imperious performance of Alan Rickman, who stole the show in the States.

Allam will play Leonard, a once celebrated novelist, now a cantankerous but brilliant editor and teacher. The plot focuses on the attempts by four aspiring writers to win Leonard’s approval. They will go to great lengths for success as their tutor’s unorthodox tuition leads them into taking desperate and often underhanded measures, with dramatic and comic consequences.

Roger Allam

Despite having made a stir elsewhere, such as with TV’s Game of Thrones and Margaret Thatcher biopic The Iron Lady, it is on the stage that multi Olivier Award winner Allam truly shines. His recent theatre credits include Henry IV Parts 1 & 2 and The Tempest, both at Shakespeare’s Globe, and his performance in the latter resulted in Telegraph theatre critic Charles Spencer describing him as, “the most versatile and humane of actors". Leonard is a part which we believe Allam has the potential to make his own, with his deft control of sentimentality and comic timing.

Theresa Rebeck

Rebeck’s recent musical drama series Smash  has enjoyed success on US network NBC and her writing has become a staple on American TV screens. A Pulitzer Prize finalist for drama with Omnium Gatherum, her best work both on and off Broadway has come when she uses sudden twists, quickfire one-liners and carefully managed chaos to great comic effect. Her collaboration with Hampstead Theatre favourite director Terry Johnson (Oh What a Lovely War, and The Duck House) should be promising as both are masters at building a play to a crescendo of corkscrew-twist drama and suspense.