A Little Life To Transfer To The West End

Edinburgh Festival play A Little Life is coming to London next year.

Based on Hanya Yanagihara’s best-selling 2015 novel, the play will preview at the Harold Pinter Theatre in London for a 12 week season from 25 March to 18 June 2023, with an opening night on 30 March.

Ahead of its West End run, the play will be available to watch in Richmond Theatre from 14 to 18 March 2023.

The book was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize, and, the following year, nominated for the Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Fiction.

The story explores topics such as friendship, sexuality, race, abuse and addiction, and follows four college friends in New York City as they pursue their careers as a lawyer, actor, architect and artist.

Directed by Ivo van Hove (West Side Story), the show will star James Norton (Happy Valley) as Jude, Omari Douglas (Cabaret) as JB, Luke Thompson (Bridgerton) as Willem, and Zach Wyatt (The Witcher) as Malcolm.

Completing the cast will be Elliot Cowan (Foundation) as Brother Luke/Caleb/Doctor Traylor/, Zubin Varla (Tammy Faye) as Harold, Nathalie Armin (Home) as Ana and Emilio Doorgasingh (Game of Thrones) as Andy.

The director Ivo Van Hove said:

“It’s a joy to be returning to the London stage, to a community that has made us feel so welcome, and especially to be bringing Hanya’s incredible novel A Little Life to the stage in the English language for the first time – quite genuinely a dream come true.”

The play was originally directed in Amsterdam and premiered in Edinburgh this Summer and in New York in Fall. The Harold Pinter run will be the play’s English-speaking premiere.

A Little Life is adapted for the stage by Koen Tachelet, Ivo van Hove and Hanya Yanagihara, costume design is done by An D’Huys, sound design by Eric Sleichim, and set and lighting design by Jan Versweyveld.