A Little Life Screenplay by Hanya Yanigahara and Ivo Van Hove

 

A Little Life follows the complex relationships of four college friends in New York City: Willem, an actor; Malcolm, an architect; JB, an artist; and, at the centre of their group, Jude, a lawyer.

Over the decades, their relationships deepen and darken, changed by ambition, addiction and pride. Yet their greatest challenge is Jude himself, whose secrets – and shame – define not just his own life, but that of his friends as well.

A bruising and beautiful story of love, the limits of human endurance, and the tyranny of memory, Hanya Yanagihara's novel A Little Life has sold over a million copies and was shortlisted for the Booker Prize and the Women's Prize for Fiction.

The stage adaptation – conceived by Ivo van Hove, and adapted by Koen Tachelet, van Hove and Yanagihara herself – was first performed in a Dutch-language production at Internationaal Theater Amsterdam in the Netherlands in 2018, before transferring to New York in 2022. This English-language version opened in London's West End in 2023, directed by Ivo van Hove and with a cast led by James Norton as Jude.

After absolutely falling in love with Hanya Yanagihara’s A Little Life, I was waiting for my husband to have an MRI scan when an email popped up announcing the Screenplay. I quite obviously dived straight over to Nick Hern Books and preordered it without a second thought.

The screenplay is quite different to the book in the sense of its not as long, there are many details left out (which is obvious, they can’t squeeze a 25 million page book into a 3 hour stage show). But it took nothing away from the main focus on the storyline whatsoever. I haven’t seen the stage show as I’m faaaar away from London (sunny old Newcastle), but I really want to see it when it comes to the cinema. If you followed me reading A Little Life Novel, you’ll know how much I love it and that it’s pretty much my favourite book I’ve ever read. You get every single emotion possible while reading it. I didn’t cry reading the screenplay, but I did get emotional and slightly misty eyed. I feel the stageshow would be amazing though.

Again, thanks Hanya for destroying my soul, and thanks to Ivo Van Hove and Koen Tachelet for bringing the screenplay into my life.