Jeremy Herrin directs Roger Allam in The Moderate Soprano, David Hare’s new play about an intense love affair between unlikely bedfellows.

Triple Olivier Award winner Allam plays Etonian science teacher John Christie, a man with formidable passion and will who wooed his opera singer wife with a determination befitting a man who won the Military Cross. Now, in 1934, his admiration for the works of Wagner leads him to embark on an ambitious project: the construction of an Opera House on his estate in Sussex.

Such is the scale of the enterprise that passion alone may not be enough. It’s only when a famous violinist is accidentally fogged in overnight in Eastbourne that Christie first hears word of a group of refugees for whom life in Germany is becoming impossible. Perhaps they can deliver Christie’s vision of the sublime, assuming of course they’re willing to cast his wife in the lead?

Allam, whose London stage credits include The Tempest and Henry IV Parts I & II at Shakespeare’s Globe, returns to the Hampstead Theatre following his 2014 performance in Seminar.

The production marks director Herrin’s fourth collaboration with Hare following their work on The Vertical Hour, South Downs and The Absence Of War.