The Royal Shakespeare Company and Neal Street Productions announced full casting for the U.S. tour of Hamnet, featuring Kemi-Bo Jacobs as Agnes and Rory Alexander as William. The stage premiere production embarks on its U.S. tour in 2026, opening at Chicago Shakespeare Theater, before playing at Shakespeare Theatre Company (STC) from March 17 – April 12.
The critically-acclaimed production, directed by Erica Whyman, will visit Chicago Shakespeare Theater from February 10 to March 8, before transferring to STC from March 17 to April 12, followed by American Conservatory Theater from April 22 to May 24.
Based on the best-selling novel by Maggie O’Farrell, adapted by award-winning playwright Lolita Chakrabarti (Life of Pi, Red Velvet, Hymn), 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. Hamnet is a love letter to passion, birth, grief, and the magic of nature.
The original RSC/Neal Street stage production of Hamnet played to sellout audiences in Stratford-upon-Avon 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.
Kemi-Bo Jacobs plays Agnes. Jacobs’s recent stage credits include Coriolanus (National Theatre), The Other Boleyn Girl (Chichester), Ocean at the End of the Lane (West End and National Theatre Tour), All My Sons (Manchester Royal Exchange and UK Tour), Wild East (Young Vic), The Winter’s Tale (RSC), and The Sweet Science of Bruising (Southwark Playhouse). Her screen credits include Million Days, The Letter for The King (Netflix), The Great (Hulu), McMafia, Thirteen, Delicious, London Has Fallen, The Honorable Woman, Lewis, and Doctor Who.
Rory Alexander plays William. Alexander can currently be seen starring as a young Murtagh Fitzgibbons Fraser in the Outlander prequel Blood of My Blood for Starz. Rory was longlisted for a BIFA for Best Breakthrough Performance for his leading role in Inland opposite Mark Rylance and Kathryn Hunter. He has recently completed filming on Justin Chadwick’s latest feature Untamed with Emily Barber and Matthew Steer. Rory can also be seen playing the role of Boogie in Danny Boyle’s Pistol alongside Louis Partridge, Thomas Brodie-Sangster, and Maisie Williams for FX/Hulu (US) and Disney+(UK). Other notable film and television credits include Element Film’s Dark Windows, Dark Game with Ed Westwick, Kenny Swinney in Sky’s Then You Run with Leah McNamara, Eric in Amazon’s Alex Rider S2 with Vicky McClure, and Netflix’s Anxious People.
“I am delighted to be revisiting this extraordinary story for U.S. 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 the stage with a luminous intelligence and a profound and shocking understanding of the love and loss that shaped their lives,” said director Erica Whyman. “They are joined by a wonderful company bringing a wealth of experience and spirited invention to Lolita’s searing adaptation.
“The play explores Agnes’s remarkable spiritual gifts and her relationship with both the natural world and the future with an imaginative theatricality, and 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 that finds eternal expression on the stage — to see it in the theater is to bear witness to the astonishing resilience of the human spirit.”
Completing the cast are Troy Alexander (Bartholomew), Nigel Barrett (John/ Will Kempe), Haydn Burke (Understudy Bartholomew, Hamnet/Thomas Day & Henry Condell), Ajani Cabey (Hamnet/Thomas Day), Saffron Dey (Judith), Victoria Elliott (Joan & Elizabeth Condell), Heather Forster (Eliza), Thalia Gambe (Understudy Susanna, Judith & Tilly), Karl Haynes (Ned/Henry Condell & Physician), Ava Hinds Jones (Susanna), Nicki Hobday (Jude & Physician’s Wife), Penny Layden (Mary), Matilda McCarthy (Tilly/Caterina & Will’s Landlady), and Bert Seymour (Burbage/Father John).
Maggie O’Farrell’s Hamnet has sold over 1.5 million copies worldwide and was named both Waterstones Book of the Year and winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award in 2020. The novel also saw O’Farrell named the winner of the 2020 Women’s Prize for Fiction, the UK’s most prestigious annual book award celebrating and honoring fiction written by women. As the No. 1 Sunday Times Bestseller in 2021, Hamnet was shortlisted for the Walter Scott Prize for Historical Fiction (2021) and British Book Awards ‘Fiction Book of the Year’ (2021).
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.
Hamnet runs March 17 – April 12, 2026 in Shakespeare Theatre Company’s Harman Hall, 610 F St NW, Washington, DC 20004. Tickets are all on sale, and individual tickets begin at $39. For tickets and information, go online.
SPECIAL PERFORMANCES
- Young Prose Night (Under 35) – Friday, March 27, 7:30pm
- Audio Description – Saturday, April 4, 2pm
- Open Captioning – Saturday, March 28, 2pm | Wednesday, April 8, 12pm | Thursday, April 9, 7:30pm
- Post-Show Discussion – Wednesday, April 1, 7:30pm
ABOUT THE ARTISTS
Rory Alexander
William
British actor Rory Alexander can currently be seen starring as a young Murtagh Fitzgibbons Fraser in the highly anticipated Outlander prequel Blood of My Blood for Starz, alongside Harriet Slater, Jamie Roy, and Tony Curran, and is now in production on S2. His character is a key figure in the Outlander universe, originally portrayed by Duncan LaCroix. In this prequel, the story explores the lives and relationships of the parents of both Jamie and Claire, set in two distinct time periods. Further cementing his growing presence in the industry, Rory was longlisted for a BIFA for Best Breakthrough Performance for his leading role as Man in feature film Inland opposite Mark Rylance and Kathryn Hunter. The film explores the fractured identity of a young man after the mysterious disappearance of his mother and premiered to rave reviews at the 2023 BFI London Film Festival with the Guardian praising the film as an “enigmatic, genre-defying picture.” He has recently completed filming on Justin Chadwick’s latest feature Untamed with Emily Barber and Matthew Steer. Rory can also be seen playing the role of Boogie in Danny Boyle’s Pistol alongside Louis Partridge, Thomas Brodie-Sangster and Maisie Williams for FX/Hulu (US) and Disney+(UK). The series follows the Sex Pistols guitarist Steve Jones and the band’s rise to prominence and notoriety. Other notable film and television credits include Element Film’s Dark Windows, DarkGame with Ed Westwick, Kenny Swinney in Sky’s Then You Run with Leah McNamara, Eric in Amazon’s Alex Rider S2 with Vicky McClure, and Netflix’s Anxious People.
Troy Alexander
Bartholomew
Stage credits include: Passion Fruit (Barbican), Slave Play (West End), Midsummer Night’s Dream (York Theatre Royal), Harry Potter and the Cursed Child (West End), The Visit (National Theatre) and One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest (English Theatre Frankfurt). Television credits include: Down Cemetery Road (Apple TV), Extraordinary S1 (Disney+), Feel Good S2 (Netflix) and Not Going Out (BBC). Film credits include: The Lair (dir. Neil Marshall).
Nigel Barrett
John/ Will Kempe
Theater includes: Cymbeline, Taming of the Shrew, Princess Essex (Shakespeare’s Globe), Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead (Complicite), Julius Caesar (RSC), Britannicus (Lyric Hammersmith), Living Newspaper (Royal Court), The Mysteries (Royal Exchange Manchester), Party Skills for the End of the World (Manchester International Festival), Kingdom Come, Richard III – An Arab Tragedy (RSC), Margate/Dreamland, Get Stuff Break Free, The Eye Test (National Theatre), Attack of the Wolfdogs, The Show In Which Hopefully Nothing Happens, Baddies the Musical (Unicorn), The Body, A Mirror for Princes (The Barbican), Cyrano de Bergerac (Northern Stage), Kidstown, The Passion, Praxis Makes Perfect, Shelflife (National Theatre Wales/Berlin Festspiele), There Has Possibly Been An Incident (Soho Theatre), A Speakers Progress (Peter Brook’s Bouffes du Nord Paris/Brooklyn Academy of Music), Pericles (Regent’s Park), SHUNT. Film and TV includes: One Hundred & Eighty (Dark Avenue Film Ltd), Doctors, Casualty, The Mysteries, Coast, The Lens (BBC), Dream Agency (Forest Fringe/Arthaus), Cycles (Toynbee Films), The Gospel of Us ( Welsh Film Council), Hairy Eyeball (Channel 4), England My England (Film 4), Robin Hood (Squint Opera), Better Than Life (Telecaster). Awards: Stage Award, Best Actor (Pops); Samuel Beckett Theatre Award (The Body).
Haydn Burke
Understudy Bartholomew, Hamnet/Thomas Day & Henry Condell
Training: Royal Birmingham Conservatoire. Recent credits include: Warhorse (UK Tour), Hamnet (RSC & West End) and The Gunpowder Plot (immersive) directed by Hannah Price.
Ajani Cabey
Hamnet/Thomas Day
RSC: Hamnet (RSC/West End). Training: Bristol Old Vic Theatre School. Theater whilst training: Absolute Scenes, The Last Days of Judas Iscariot, Romeo and Juliet, Loam, Jumpers for Goalposts, A View from the Bridge, Live Like Pigs (BOVTS). Screen credits include: The Gathering (World/ITV), Alex Rider 3 (Amazon), The Fence, Pickney (Blak Wave Productions), 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea (BOVTS).
Saffron Dey
Judith
Theater: Inertia (Kings Playground), Blacklist – R&D (Mercury Theatre), Ain’t i a woman? (Tower Theatre), Top Girls (Liverpool Everyman). Theater whilst at ALRA: Consensual, Love’s Labour’s Lost, The Laramie Project, Antigone, Boy Gets Girl. Television: Call The Midwife. Short film: The Angry Man and The Washing Machine, Flying Monkey, Lungs, Estate. Commercial: Un-Safe Spaces Now (Missing Link Films), Bloom & Wild (Academy Films), Aldi – Teatime Takedown (McCann London), EE – Best Seats In The House (Saatchi & Saatchi), Bose: Live Loud, Love Quiet (Pretty Bird), BT Infinity and Beyond (AMVBBDO).
Victoria Elliott
Joan & Elizabeth Condell
Theater includes: This Is My Family (Southwark Playhouse), Twelfth Night, A Midsummer Night’s Dream (Shakespeare’s Globe), The Lost Disc (Soho Theatre), Hedda Gabler, Get Carter, Season Ticket, Oh What A Lovely War, Pub Quiz, Wind In The Willows (Northern Stage), Cat On A Hot Tin Roof, Two (Manchester Theatre Awards Best Actress Nomination), As You Like It (Manchester Royal Exchange), I Can’t Sing! (Palladium), Cooking With Elvis (Hull Truck), Tyne, 13.1, Jump, Me And Cilla, A Nightingale Sang, Rhino And The Drum (Live Theatre Newcastle). Television includes: Vera, Ted Lasso, Rain Dogs, The Bay, Vic And Bob’s Big Night Out, Boy Meets Girl, The Kennedys, Hebburn, Truckers, The Ministry Of Curious Stuff, Holby City And Steel River Blues. Film Includes: Ammonite.
Heather Forster
Eliza
Heather trained at the Royal Central School of Speech and Drama. She made her professional stage debut in The Book Of Dust: La Belle Sauvage at the Bridge Theatre directed by Nicholas Hytner. Other stage performances include: We Could All Be Perfect at the Sheffield Crucible, Run, Rebel for Pilot Theatre. Her TV credits include: DI RAY (Series reg, S2, ITV), Call The Midwife (BBC), Grace (ITV), Casualty, Doctors (BBC), Isle Of Sh*te (upcoming, Channel 4). Film includes: The Colour Room, starring Phoebe Dynevor and Matthew Goode.
Thalia Gambe
Understudy Susanna, Judith, Tilly
Thalia Gambe is an Actor graduating from Rose Bruford College Acting Course in 2024. Credits include: Punk Rock (Stratford East Theatre) and Blue Corridor 15 (BBC Creating a Scene).
Karl Haynes
Ned/Henry Condell, Physician
Theater includes: War Horse (National Theatre Productions), Hamnet (RSC & West End), Enemy of the People, Wonderland, Shebeen, Of Mice and Men, The Ashes (Nottingham Playhouse), Passion, (Theatre du Chatelet, Paris), Warhorse (National Theatre UK, Ireland, South Africa/ Tenth Anniversary/ International Tours), Much Ado About Nothing, (Colchester Mercury), Seeing The Lights (New Vic), Lady Chatterley’s Lover, Macbeth and 1984, (Hull Truck), Crying in the Chapel, (Fink On/Contact Theatre), Wasteland and Sir Gawain and The Green Knight (New Perspectives), Look Back in Anger (Harrogate/Oldham), Bloodtide, Road, Lord of the Flies (Pilot Theatre/ Theatre Royal York/ Lyric Hammersmith), Macbeth, (Theatre Royal York), Aeroplane Bones, (Bristol Old Vic), Waking and Sleeping Dogs (Red Ladder), We’re Going On A Bear Hunt (Polka/ Lakeside Arts), Glory, (Theatre Clwyd). Television credits include: The long shadow, Sherwood, World on Fire, Gunpowder, Happy Valley, Doctors, The Chase, Holby City, Most Mysterious Murders, Grange Hill, North and South, Eastenders, Casualty (BBC), Downton Abbey, Emmerdale, Coronation Street, Boy Meets Girl, Blue Murder, The Royal, Heartbeat, Cold Feet (ITV), Ghost Squad, North Square (ch4) Urban Gothic (ch5). Feature Films: When The Lights Went Out, The Devil Outside, The Colour Room, Apartment 7a. Radio: Out of the Blue BBC Radio 4.
Ava Hinds-Jones
Susanna
Ava trained at LAMDA. She starred in Ben Wheatley’s TV series, Generation Z (Channel 4), Silent Witness (BBC) and the upcoming series, Believe Me (ITV).
Nicki Hobday
Jude, Physician’s Wife
Forced Entertainment shows: Out of Order (International tour), 12am: Awake and Looking Down (Festival d’Automne, Paris), Under Bright Light (PACT, Essen), And on the Thousandth Night (international tour), Complete Works: Table Top Shakespeare (international tour), Speak Bitterness (MCA Chicago) and The Last Adventures (Asia Culture Centre, South Korea). Other theater work includes: Heartbreaking Final (Wiener Festwochen, Vienna), ’Trainers: or The Brutal Unpleasant Atmosphere of this Most Disagreeable Season’ (The Gate Theatre), No Planet B (Jacksons Lane).
Kemi-Bo Jacobs
Agnes
Theater: Coriolanus (National Theatre), The Other Boleyn Girl (Chichester), Ocean at the End of the Lane (West End and National Theatre Tour), All My Sons (Manchester Royal Exchange and UK Tour), Wild East (Young Vic), The Winter’s Tale (RSC), The Sweet Science of Bruising (Southwark Playhouse). Screen: A Million Days, The Letter for The King (Netflix), The Great (Hulu), McMafia, Thirteen, Delicious, London Has Fallen, The Honorable Woman, Lewis, Doctor Who.
Penny Layden
Mary
RSC: The Tempest, Roberto Zucco and Measure for Measure. Theatre: Coven (Kiln), London Tide, Paradise, Jellyfish, Macbeth, My Country, Another World, An Oak Tree, Everyman, Edward II, Table and Timon of Athens (NT), The Ocean at the End of the Lane (NT/West End), Pygmalion, The Lorax and Cinderella (Old Vic), Medea (Soho Place), A Christmas Carol (Rose, Kingston), Cleft (Rough Magic/Galway Festival), Bright Phoenix (Liverpool Everyman), Beryl (West Yorkshire Playhouse), 66 Books (Bush), Lidless (West End/Hightide), Draw Me Close, Vernon God Little and The Art of Random Whistling (Young Vic), The Bacchae, Mary Barton, Electra and Mayhem (Manchester Royal Exchange), Dancing at Lughnasa (Birmingham Rep), Romeo and Juliet, The Antipodes and Hamlet (Shakespeare’s Globe), Comfort Me With Apples (Hampstead), Assassins (Sheffield Crucible), Seasons Greetings and Popcorn (Liverpool Playhouse), The Laramie Project (West End), A Passage to India, The Magic Toyshop and Jane Eyre (Shared Experience), Maid Marian and her Merry Men (Bristol Old Vic). Television: Supacell, Father Brown, Belgravia, My Country, Grantchester, Dark Angel, EastEnders, Prisoners’ Wives, Call the Midwife, Land Girls, Sirens, South Riding, Silent Witness, Poppy Shakespeare, Bad Mother’s Handbook, Waterloo Road, No Angels, Murphy’s Law, Fat Friends, Outlaws, M.I.T and Casualty. Film: Broken and The Libertine.
Matilda McCarthy
Tilly/Caterina, Will’s Landlady
Matilda trained at the Royal Welsh College of Music and drama. She’s thrilled to be making her RSC debut. Theater credits include: BROS (Kings Heads Theatre), A Very Expensive Poison (Chapter Theatre Cardiff), Dissonance (Young Vic), DNA-I (Criterion Theatre).
Bert Seymour
Burbage/Father John
Bert Seymour is an incredibly versatile actor and linguist who trained at LAMDA. He’s also experienced with comedy and sings in a sea shanty band. Most recently Bert has had roles in Suspect: The Shooting of Jean Charles de Menezes (Disney+), Say Nothing (FX) and Masters of The Air (Apple TV). He is soon to be seen in French feature, Les Parfaits (Dir. Ludovic Bernard) and he will soon start work on The Bitter End (Dir. Mike Newell). On stage, last summer Bert performed as Caesar in Anthony & Cleopatra (Dir. Blanche McIntyre) at The Globe Theatre and prior to that, he played Justice Shallow + Fenton in The Merry Wives of Windsor (Dir. Josh Roche) also at The Globe. Bert speaks fluent French, Italian, Mandarin and is training in BSL.
ROYAL SHAKESPEARE COMPANY
The Royal Shakespeare Company (RSC) is a leading global theater company that sparks local, national and international conversations that build connections, create opportunities and bring joy. RSC passionately believes that great storytelling can change the world, and that theater offers its own unique form of storytelling: it’s live and shared, and transforms a group of strangers into audiences who, together, experience a story come to life in front of their eyes.
RSC collaborates with the most exciting artists to tell the stories of our time, and through a range of programs nurtures the talent of the future. They perform on three stages in their home in Stratford-upon-Avon, in London and in communities and schools across the country and around the world. Their transformative Creative Learning and Engagement programs reach over half a million young people each year.
NEAL STREET PRODUCTIONS
Neal Street is one of the UK’s most respected production companies, producing film, television and theater. Founded 2003 by Sam Mendes, Pippa Harris, and Caro Newling, it makes distinctive, popular award-winning projects on both sides of the Atlantic. TV includes Call the Midwife, The Franchise, Britannia, Penny Dreadful, The Hollow Crown. Films include Mendes’ Empire of Light, 1917 and Revolutionary Road; Hamnet and The Magic Faraway Tree. Currently in development: The Beatles project for Sony Pictures – four distinct theatrical feature films about the greatest band in history, conceived and directed by Sam Mendes. Theater originated by Neal Street includes The Lehman Trilogy, The Motive and the Cue, The Hills of California, Hamnet, Local Hero, The Ferryman, Shrek the Musical, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, The Bridge Project 2010 – 2012, Three Days of Rain, The Vertical Hour. West End transfers include The Fifth Step, Walking with Ghosts, The Moderate Soprano, This House, The Painkiller, Merrily We Roll Along, South Downs/The Browning Version, Red, Enron, Sunday in the Park with George, Mary Stuart. The theater slate is overseen by Newling together with producer, Georgia Gatti. In 2015 Neal Street moved under the umbrella of parent company, All3Media, which is owned by RedBird IMI.
SHAKESPEARE THEATRE COMPANY
For 40 years, the Tony Award-winning Shakespeare Theatre Company has been recognized as the nation’s premier classical theater. Classical plays are realized best not by originalism but by walking the path Shakespeare himself followed, creating works that spoke to his own contemporary audience. Under the leadership of Artistic Director Simon Godwin and Executive Director Angela Lee Gieras, STC tells vital stories in audacious forms, stories that are Shakespearean in the deepest sense, even if (and especially when) they are not written by Shakespeare. By focusing on works with profound themes and complex characters, STC’s artistic mission is unique among regional theaters: to bring to vibrant life groundbreaking, thought-provoking, and eminently accessible theater.
