- Felicity Kendal returns to Tom Stoppard’s Indian Ink in a powerful, elegiac performance.
- Jonathan Kent’s revival at Hampstead Theatre foregrounds the play’s questions of love, memory and literary posterity.
- Strong supporting turns from Ruby Ashbourne Serkis, Gavi Singh Chera and Donald Sage Mackay balance the production.
- The staging’s double time-scheme and radio-play roots underscore Stoppard’s blend of wit and grief.
H2: Kendal leads a poignant revival
Felicity Kendal, who first performed in Tom Stoppard’s Indian Ink on radio and in the original stage premiere, returns in Hampstead Theatre’s revival that now carries extra poignancy after the playwright’s recent death. Directed by Jonathan Kent, the production reads in places like an emotional epitaph: a staged meditation on how writers are remembered and misremembered.
Short, clear scenes alternate between the 1980s and the 1930s. Kendal plays Eleanor Swan, the surviving sister who guards the letters and poems of the doomed poet Flora Crewe. Kendal’s performance moves briskly between steel and sweetness, giving the role a crisp intelligence and palpable grief.
H3: Stoppard’s themes — love, posterity and empire
Indian Ink began as a radio play and Stoppard’s structure still carries that rhythmic, cross-faded quality. The script cuts between eras and continents, pitting questions of private feeling against public history. Flora Crewe, an Edwardian poet who travels to India, becomes the focus of competing voices — those who would canonise her and those who would sensationalise her.
The American academic Eldon Pike, who appears as a comic but ominous presence, represents the crude urge to rewrite a life for consumption. Stoppard frames this threat to literary truth against the politics of empire, using the dual timelines to probe misunderstandings between coloniser and colonised.
H4: Production, design and supporting performances
Jonathan Kent’s staging leans into the play’s radio origins with metronomic scene changes and a fluid use of space. Gavi Singh Chera gives a persuasive turn as the artist Nirad Das, whose love for an Englishwoman is complicated by the realities of British rule. Ruby Ashbourne Serkis plays Flora with both wit and vulnerability; her scenes feel quietly heartbreaking.
Donald Sage Mackay brings mischievous energy to Eldon Pike, popping up throughout the auditorium and turning footnotes into theatrical jokes that still bite. Irvine Iqbal doubles as several Indian leaders across periods, supplying calm authority in transitions.
The production’s emotional core rests on Kendal’s final scene, where she stands at the grave of a renowned writer. The moment is handled with restraint and courage, and Stoppard’s dedication of the text to Kendal’s mother, Laura, adds an intimate aftertaste to the performance.
H5: Practical information
Indian Ink runs at Hampstead Theatre, London, until 31 January. The production’s combination of Stoppardian ideas and human feeling makes it a notable return for a play that asks how lives are told and who gets to tell them.
For audiences interested in a staging that balances intellectual rigor with genuine emotion, this revival offers a fitting and moving tribute to a major playwright.
Image Referance: https://www.theguardian.com/stage/2025/dec/16/indian-ink-review-felicity-kendal-is-formidable-in-emotional-epitaph-for-tom-stoppard
