About the Play:

Shakespeare in Love is a full-length dramatic comedy adapted for the stage by Lee Hall, based on the honored and beloved 1998 Oscar-winning screenplay by Marc Norman and Tom Stoppard. Against a bustling background of mistaken identity, ruthless scheming, backstage theatrics and a misbehaving dog, this stage adaptation of Shakespeare in Love tells the story of young Shakespeare and the love that inspired him to write a masterpiece.

Shakespeare in Love is a love letter to the stage and a celebration of theatre, music and human connection. While the government threatens to close all theatres, promising young playwright Will Shakespeare is tormented by writer's block... the deadline for his new play is fast approaching but he's in desperate need of inspiration. That is, until he finds his muse in the form of passionate noblewoman, Viola De Lesseps. This beautiful young woman is Will's greatest admirer and will stop at nothing (including breaking the law) to appear in his next play. Their forbidden love draws many others, including Queen Elizabeth, into the drama and Will's love for Viola quickly blossoms and inspires him to write the greatest love story of all time, Romeo and Juliet.

Lee Hall's stage adaptation of Shakespeare in Love premiered in 2014 at the Noel Coward Theatre in the West End of London. The North American premiere was in 2016 at the at the Stratford Festival in Stratford, Ontario. The play enjoyed widespread acceptance among leading regional theatres, and has become one of the most-produced plays in American theatres.

Cast: 6 female, 18 male

What people say:

"Funny, often genuinely moving, and generates a glow you could warm your hands by...The best British comedy since One Man, Two Guvnors and deserves equal success." — Daily Telegraph (London)

"An absolute joy from beginning to end." — Daily Express (London)

"There's the elating sense that the material – with its rivalry between the public playhouses echoing between the Monatgues and the Capulets – is reveling in it's natural elements in the theatre...It makes you feel grateful to be alive." — The Independent (London)

"Marvelously fluid, riotously funny, and often intensely, even startlingly poignant... This may be, in part at least, a comedy about Shakespeare falling in love; but joking aside, it could just make you fall, all over again, in love with Shakespeare." — Chicago Tribune

About the Playwright:

Lee Hall is an English playwright and screenwriter who studied English Literature at Cambridge University. He has worked as a writer in theatre, TV, radio, and film. He is best known for his screenplay for Billy Elliot, which was nominated for an Oscar and was adapted into a multi-award winning stage musical.

Sir Tom Stoppard (1937-2025) was a British playwright often hailed as among the greatest of his generation. Born Tomáš Sträussler in what was then Czechoslovakia, the family fled at the onset of the Nazi invasion finally settling in England when he was eight, and Stoppard adopted the last name of his stepfather. He was catapulted into the front ranks of modern playwrights overnight when Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead opened in London in 1967. He wrote prolifically for TV, radio, and stage in a career that spanned six decades and also included a parallel career as a Hollywood script doctor, much in demand to provide dialogue to others' film scripts, and shared a best-screenplay Oscar for his contribution to Shakespeare in Love. He was knighted in 1997 and became one of the most honoured dramatists in British theatre.