Heading into what could be an odd season of programming at Hampstead, with no funding and no artistic director, it looks like transfers and co-productions could be the way forward for the troubled venue. Downstairs we get a show from Original Theatre, a company that seems to be predominantly creating streaming work, and a play by Shomit Dutta, a classicist who was captain of Harold Pinter's amateur cricket team.
Stumped imagines an encounter between Pinter (Andrew Lancel) and another absurdist playwright with a love of cricket. In fact Samuel Beckett (Stephen Tompkinson) had briefly been a professional player in his youth, but at the time that he agreed to join Pinter's team he hadn't played for decades. The two playwrights wait for their turn to bat, Beckett twitchy and superstitious, Pinter injured but booming confidently in his affected dramatic voice.
