Tamsin Greig and John Sessions to Lead William Boyd’s Longing in London

Olivier Award winner Tamsin Greig and Scottish comedian John Sessions will star in a new production of William Boyd’s Longing, reports The Daily Mail. The play will run at the Hampstead Theatre beginning February 28, with opening night set for March 7.

Longing is adapted from two Anton Chekhov stories, A Visit to Friends and My Life (The Story of a Provincial). In the first, a Russian lawyer is pressed for financial aid from an old friend whose family is facing home bankruptcy; in the second, a man renounces high society in order to work among the lower class and earn a living through hard labor.

Nina Raine will direct the production, which features an ensemble including Jonathan Bailey, Natasha Little, Eve Ponsonby and Catrin Stewart.

Greig is known to English audiences for her roles on Friday Night Dinner, Black Books and Green Wing, and on the West End stage in Much Ado About Nothing (which earned her an Olivier for Best Actress in 2007), God of Carnage, Jumpy and The Little Dog Laughed. Greig also appears on Showtime’s Episodes opposite Matt LeBlanc.

Sessions is an accomplished comedy improv actor featured on programs like Whose Line Is It Anyway? and QI. His one-man stage play Napoleon ran in the West End in the 1980s, and he’s appeared in films including Gangs of New York, The Good Shepherd, The Last Station and The Merchant of Venice.