Rory Kinnear and Natalia Osipova will star in The Standard of Living, the new play from James Graham (Punch, Dear England) that will have its world premiere in London’s West End this September.
Kinnear (Hamlet, Skyfall, The Diplomat) stars as John Maynard Keynes, the radical economist and member of the influential Bloomsbury Group who became the singular driving force behind arts funding in Britain and built a new and fairer financial model, that ultimately helped reshape the Western World in the aftermath of the First World War.
Royal Ballet Principal Natalia Osipova makes her West End debut as the celebrated ballet dancer Lydia Lopokova, a soloist with Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes who was considered the embodiment of the new era of modernist ballet.
Can you put a price on happiness, beauty and love?
Husband to ballerina Lydia Lopokova. Lover to Duncan Grant. Friend to Virginia Woolf. Keynes moves between the corridors of power in Whitehall and the intoxicating freedom of a radical circle of artists, writers and lovers – all determined to live differently.
But as markets crash, old systems crumble and Britain teeters on the edge of chaos, one question begins to consume him: What is a good life?
Can art, love and human connection reshape the future before it’s too late? Or is the world too addicted to wealth and power to change?
Alive with music, dance, desire and debate, The Standard of Living is a thrilling, funny and deeply moving portrait of a man who dared to imagine something better.
From producers Brian and Dayna Lee and Nicholas Hytner, it is directed by Hytner (The History Boys, One Man, Two Guvnors, Giant)) featuring set design by Bob Crowley (Giant, The Inheritance, An American in Paris).
The Standard of Living is produced with Len Blavatnik & Danny Cohen for Access Entertainment and Ramin Sabi. Mark Rubinstein is executive producer and general management is by Short Street Productions.
The Standard of Living will run for a strict 12-week engagement at the Theatre Royal Haymarket. Previews will begin on September 21, with opening night on September 29.
Tickets here.
Top image: Rory Kinnear (credit Chris McAndrew), Natalia Osipova, James Graham and Nicholas Hytner (images supplied)