Kemi-Bo Jacobs will play Agnes and Rory Alexander will take the role of William when the Royal Shakespeare Company’s production Hamnet goes on its first US tour.

The original RSC and Neal Street stage production of Hamnet played to sell-out audiences in Stratford in 2023, breaking box office records at the Swan Theatre. It later opened to the biggest box-office advance in the Garrick Theatre’s history when it transferred to the West End.

Based on the best-selling novel by Maggie O'Farrell and adapted by Lolita Chakrabarti, Hamnet “pulls back a curtain on the story of the greatest writer in the English language and the woman who was the constant presence and purpose of his life”.

Kemi-Bo Jacobs plays Agnes, otherwise known as Anne Hathaway. She was Virgilia in the National Theatre production of Shakespeare’s Coriolanus in 2024, Ginnie in Joel Horwood’s adaptation of Neil Gaiman’s The Ocean at the End of the Lane, a National Theatre production which toured the UK in 2023, and Hermione in the RSC production of The Winter’s Tale in 2021.

Alexander was long-listed for a British Independent Film Award for best breakthrough performance for his role in Inland opposite Mark Rylance and Kathryn Hunter.

Completing the cast are Troy Alexander (Bartholomew), Nigel Barrett (John and Will Kempe), Haydn Burke (understudy Bartholomew, Hamnet, Thomas Day and Henry Condell), Ajani Cabey (Hamnet and Thomas Day), Saffron Dey (Judith), Victoria Elliott (Joan and Elizabeth Condell), Heather Forster (Eliza), Thalia Gambe (understudy Susanna, Judith and Tilly), Karl Haynes (Ned, Henry Condell and physician), Ava Hinds Jones (Susanna), Nicki Hobday (Jude and physician’s wife), Penny Layden (Mary), Matilda McCarthy (Tilly, Caterina and Will’s landlady) and Bert Seymour (Burbage and Father John).

The production will feature set and costume design by Tom Piper, lighting by Prema Mehta, sound by Simon Baker, music by Oğuz Kaplangi, casting by Amy Ball CDG and movement by Ayşe Tashkiran.

Director Erica Whyman said, “I’m delighted to be revisiting this extraordinary story for US audiences and to be making this production with a stellar line-up of performers. Kemi-Bo Jacobs and Rory Alexander are bringing Agnes and William alive on stage with a luminous intelligence and a profound and shocking understanding of the love and loss that shaped their lives. They’re joined by a wonderful company bringing a wealth of experience and spirited invention to Lolita's searing adaptation.

“The play explores Agnes' remarkable spiritual gifts and her relationship with both the natural world and the future with an imaginative theatricality. Audiences should expect beautiful music, movement and sound design on Tom Piper's stunning set. This is, at its heart, an intimate story of family which finds eternal expression on the stage – to see it in the theatre is to bear witness to the astonishing resilience of the human spirit.”

Hamnet will visit The Yard, Chicago Shakespeare Theater, Chicago, Illinois from Tuesday 10 February until Sunday 8 March before transferring to the Shakespeare Theatre Company, Washington DC from Tuesday 17 March until Sunday 12 April and the Toni Rembe Theatre, American Conservatory Theater, San Francisco from Wednesday 22 April until Sunday 24 May.

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