Stumped

Before Samuel Beckett wrote his seminal works Waiting for Godot and Endgame, he was a cricketer: he is still the only Nobel Prize winner to feature in the pages of Wisden as a first-class player. His good friend and fellow Nobel Prize-winning author Harold Pinter, whose best-known works include The Birthday Party, The Dumb Waiter and The Homecoming, described cricket as ‘the greatest thing that God created’.

This new play is a capricious take on what the friendship between these two great men may have looked like, as well as being a tribute to their writing and their love of the game.

There will be a post-show discussion with renowned theatre critic Michael Billington OBE, former England cricket captain Mike Brearley OBE and novelist and cricket journalist Emma John. This will be broadcast as part of the live stream.

Stumped will star Stephen Tompkinson (Brassed Off, Drop The Dead Donkey, DCI Banks, Wild at Heart) as Samuel Beckett and Andrew Lancel (Coronation Street, The Bill) as Harold Pinter and is directed by Guy Unsworth.