Feature: Theatre - Keats in Hampstead at Keats House

Published: 15 July 2010
by JOSH LOEB

IT got rave reviews the last time it was staged in Hampstead, and now it’s back. From this week, poetry lovers can savour the romantic verse of John Keats in the very garden where birdsong inspired him to write his masterpiece, Ode to a Nightingale. 

Keats in Hampstead, a drama about the poet’s secret love affair with “the original girl next door” – his neighbour Fanny Brawne – is being staged in the garden of Keats House until the start of next month. 

Playwright James Veitch calls the play “a salad of criticism, John Keats’ own letters and poetry”.

“It is intended to be one of those balmy summer days one never forgets,” he says. “The garden hasn’t changed at all; the mulberry tree still stands where Keats admired it and the plum tree under which Keats famously sat and wrote Nightingale has been replanted. The idea is to celebrate London and its history and to spend some time outside – to get people out of the plush red seats in the darkened room.” 

Keats’ letters to Brawne, whom he met in 1818, were discovered after her death in 1865. Their racy nature shocked the poet’s friends, some of whom criticised their “cruelty”. But the passionate emotions described within the correspond­ence led later scholars to declare that Brawne was Keats’ key inspiration at the time he was writing his most moving work.

“They are now justly regarded as among the most beautiful let­ters ever written,” says Mr Veitch. 

It would be hard to think of a more perfect setting for a play that seeks to remind us of the joys of young love than a lawn in Hampstead on a balmy summer evening.

Pictured: Andrew Dawson and Jennifer Taylor play the leading roles

• Keats in Hampstead is at Keats House, Keats Grove, Hampstead, NW3, from July 17- August 1. For tickets (£5-£7) call 0800 411 8881. The audience are welcome to bring a picnic with them to the performance