A Little Life: James Norton to star in English-language stage premiere of mammoth novel in West End
Ivo Van Hove’s original Dutch-language production opened in Amsterdam in 2018 and was four hours long
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Your support makes all the difference.James Norton will star in Ivo van Hove’s stage production of A Little Life in the West End.
The hugely popular novel by Hanya Yanagihara, known for its hard-hitting and “traumatic” subject matter, was first adapted for the theatre by Koen Tachelet in 2018 with the author’s help.
The Dutch-language production was staged in Amsterdam and directed by van Hove, with a run time of longer than four hours.
The same production was shown with English subtitles at the Edinburgh International Festival this summer.
On Wednesday (23 November), it was announced that the English-language production of the show would premiere in the West End next year. You can find tickets here.
Running at the Harold Pinter Theatre from 25 March to 18 June 2023 (with a short preview run at the Richmond Theatre from 14 to 18 March), the show will see Happy Valley star Norton take on the role of Jude.
It’s A Sin’s Omari Douglas will play JB, while Bridgerton’s Luke Thompson appears as Willem and Zach Wyatt plays Malcolm.
Elliot Cowan, Zubin Varla, Nathalie Armin and Emilio Doorgasingh complete the cast.
Yanagihara described the adaptation as “a singular production, unlike anything I’ve seen before on stage”, adding: “I hope audiences will be as transported and astonished as I was.”
Van Hove said: “It’s a joy to be returning to the London stage, to a community that has made us feel so welcome, and especially to be bringing Hanya’s incredible novel A Little Life to the stage in the English language for the first time – quite genuinely a dream come true.”
A Little Life became a surprise worldwide hit when the book was released in 2015, given its 814-page length and troubling subject matter.
In a 2015 review, The Independent’s James Kidd wrote how every page was “saturated with trauma: child abuse, rape, domestic violence, dysfunctional families, addiction, self-harm, suicide, grief”.
Yanagihara’s third novel, To Paradise, was released earlier this year.
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