Bernardine Evaristo’s Mr Loverman is coming to the stage. The novel will receive its first theatrical adaptation at London’s National Theatre, where Natasha Gordon’s new production will have its world premiere in the Lyttelton Theatre on February 25, 2027, running through April 17.

Gordon, whose play Nine Night won the Olivier Award for Outstanding Achievement in an Affiliate Theatre, adapts the novel for the stage, with Paulette Randall directing. The production stars Danny Sapani as Barrington “Barry” Walker, Jo Martin as his wife Carmel, and Gary Beadle as Morris, Barry’s best friend and longtime secret lover.

The initial cast also includes Gabrielle Brooks as Maxine and Young Merty, Llewella Gideon as Merty and Augustina, Terique Jarrett as Daniel and Young Barry, Jenny Jules as Candaisy and Odette, and Suzette Llewellyn as Asseleitha and Cynthia. Further casting and members of the creative team are still to be announced.

Published in 2013, Mr Loverman follows Barrington Walker, a 74-year-old Antiguan-born Londoner who has built a respectable life in Hackney as a husband, father, grandfather, and well-known member of his community. Behind that public life, however, Barry has spent six decades in a secret relationship with Morris, his best friend.

As Barry begins to confront the life he has built and the truths he has kept hidden, the novel moves between Antigua and contemporary London, bringing questions of love, family, sexuality, identity, faith, and self-acceptance into the same complicated domestic world. The National Theatre describes the stage adaptation as a story of “love, family and identity” spanning six decades, from Antigua to modern-day London.

The production brings Evaristo’s characters to the stage more than a decade after the novel’s publication and follows the success of the BBC’s 2023 television adaptation, which starred Lennie James as Barry. The National Theatre production will mark the first stage adaptation of the novel.

For Evaristo, Mr Loverman is another work from a body of fiction that has repeatedly examined race, gender, sexuality, class, migration, and the lives of Black British communities. Her 2019 novel Girl, Woman, Other won the Booker Prize, shared with Margaret Atwood’s The Testaments.

The National Theatre production of Mr Loverman runs from February 25 to April 17, 2027, at the Lyttelton Theatre. Public booking opened on September 24.

Tickets are now on sale here.