Tom Stoppard's philosophical farce Jumpers, written for the National in 1972, gets a new Hampstead Theatre production from Blanche McIntyre.
Tom Stoppard’s Jumpers, a farce about moral philosophy, opens on Hampstead Theatre’s Main Stage in Swiss Cottage on Wednesday 25 November 2026. Blanche McIntyre directs.
Stoppard wrote the play for the National Theatre in 1972, when he was thirty-four and had one hit behind him. A professor of ethics is trying to write a lecture proving that God exists. In the next room his wife, a retired musical star, is having a breakdown.
At a party, a member of a troupe of acrobats is shot dead, and his corpse spends much of the play in a cupboard. Everyone saw him shot. Nobody saw who fired.
The play was received as impossibly clever and is now recognised as warmer. The marriage at its centre is real, and the argument over whether goodness is more than a habit is one Stoppard plainly cared about.
Hampstead has a long record with new writing that argues rather than depicts, and McIntyre is trusted with plays in this register.
This is a Hampstead production rather than a transfer, in a room of 325 seats. It runs over Christmas to Saturday 23 January 2027.