The Humans

The Humans description

The Humans is a new play by Jack Thorne, adapted from Matt Haig's novel, with Matt Smith as an alien sent to live among us.

An unnamed extraterrestrial is sent to Earth to stop what his own kind see as a dangerous leap in human progress. He takes over the body of Professor Andrew Martin, a Cambridge mathematician, and must pass as him among his family and colleagues. Living a human life from the inside, he encounters its flaws, its contradictions and its capacity for empathy and compassion, and is changed by what he finds.

The production is a world premiere and the first time Haig's novel has been adapted for the stage. Described by its producers as a darkly comic, philosophical satire about what it means to be human, it plays a strictly limited 13-week season at the Theatre Royal Haymarket. It is produced by Melting Pot and Second Half Productions in association with Len Blavatnik and Danny Cohen for Access Entertainment.

Jack Thorne's stage work includes Harry Potter and the Cursed Child, The Motive and the Cue at the National Theatre and A Christmas Carol at The Old Vic, and his television writing includes Adolescence; his awards include two Primetime Emmys and six BAFTAs. Matt Haig is the author of The Midnight Library, How to Stop Time and Reasons to Stay Alive, and his books have been translated into more than fifty languages. The director is Jeremy Herrin, former Artistic Director of Headlong, whose credits include Wolf Hall and Bring Up the Bodies, which won him the Evening Standard Award for Best Director, as well as People, Places and Things and This House.

Matt Smith is known for playing the Doctor in Doctor Who, Daemon Targaryen in House of the Dragon and Prince Philip in The Crown, and has received BAFTA nominations for Doctor Who and The Death of Bunny Munro. On stage he has appeared in Lungs at The Old Vic, the musical American Psycho at the Almeida and An Enemy of the People in the West End. The rest of the cast is still to be announced.

Book now to see Matt Smith as a visitor from another planet learning what it means to be human in The Humans.

Playing at Theatre Royal Haymarket

8 Haymarket, London, SW1Y 4HT GB (venue info)

Directions