Stumped

‘For God’s sake, let us sit upon the green and tell sad stories of the fall of batsmen…’

A game of cricket. Two of the greatest playwrights. And maybe even time for some tea.

Before Samuel Beckett became the playwright universally known for Waiting for Godot, he was a cricketer. He is still the only Nobel prize-winner to feature in the pages of Wisden as a first-class player. His friend and fellow Nobel prize-winner, Harold Pinter, whose best known works include The Birthday Party and Betrayal, described cricket as ‘the greatest thing that God created on earth’.

Stumped is a brilliantly witty new play by Shomit Dutta which explores what the friendship between these two playwrights may have looked like. Starring Stephen Tompkinson as Samuel Beckett (Brassed Off, Drop the Dead Donkey, DCI Banks, Wild at Heart) and Andrew Lancel (The Bill, Coronation Street) as Harold Pinter.