Christopher Hampton’s most celebrated play The Philanthropist has been delighting audiences since its premiere at the Royal Court in 1970. A biting ‘bourgeois comedy’ and a fiendishly clever inversion of Moliere’s ‘The Misanthrope’, Simon Callow’s new production boasts some of today’s most exciting young stage and screen actors.

Out in the ‘real world’ the Prime Minister and his cabinet have been assassinated and England’s most treasured writers are being murdered one by one! Back in the cosy bubble of university life, a bachelor don anguishes over sex, marriage, anagrams and the meaning of life. Did someone suggest academics were ‘out of touch’?

This exciting ensemble cast includes Simon Bird (star of The Inbetweeners and Friday Night Dinner), model and actress Lily Cole, Charlotte Ritchie (Fresh Meat, Call The Midwife, Siblings) Tom Rosenthal (Friday Night Dinner and BAFTA award winning writer, actor and musician Matt Berry (The IT Crowd, The Mighty Boosh).

Christopher Hampton’s other works for the stage include Les Liaisons Dangereuses (recently revived to great acclaim) and Treats. He has also recently received significant acclaim for his translations of the award-winning smash hit The Father (“translated with venomous flare”) as well as The Mother and The Truth. The Old Vic has also just presented a major re-staging of his translation of Art. Among Christopher’s many screen adaptations are Les Liaisons Dangereuses and Atonement for which he received an Oscar® and an Oscar® nomination respectively.

Simon Callow has directed over thirty shows, including the multi award-winning musical Carmen Jones, the West End and Broadway productions of Shirley Valentine and the award-winning Single Spies by Alan Bennett at the National Theatre and in the West End.