While many UK theatres are struggling to woo their audiences back following the pandemic’s impact and amid the cost of living crisis, two upcoming shows have secured West End transfers before the original productions have even opened. Both are adaptations of bestselling novels.
Hamnet, based on Maggie O’Farrell’s reimagination of Shakespeare’s life from the vantage point of the wife he left behind, will move on to London’s Garrick theatre after selling out at the Royal Shakespeare Company’s Swan theatre in Stratford-upon-Avon, where it opens next week. A Little Life, from Hanya Yanagihara’s New York-set trauma tale, will scale up in July from the 800-seater Harold Pinter theatre where it opens on Saturday, to the 1,150-seater Savoy.
