NYC Comedy Firebrand Returns to Barons Court Theatre
Jasmine Dorothy Haefner performs U.K. Premiere of Retrospective
Jasmine Dorothy Haefner performs U.K. premiere of Retrospective
May 18, 2026
Barons Court Theatre is welcoming back one of its most memorable alumni as New York–based comedic actress and writer Jasmine Dorothy Haefner returns to London for the U.K. premiere of Retrospective, running 14–23 May (excluding Sundays and Mondays). The dark comedy arrives in West London following its world premiere in New York last summer, bringing with it Haefner’s trademark blend of high-energy character work, emotional whiplash and theatrical mischief.
Retrospective follows the recently deceased celebrity painter Rory McGrory, who finds himself trapped in a liminal afterlife where he must confront every person he despised while alive. Haefner plays a flamboyantly theatrical art critic — “a sort of Helena Bonham Carter figure who died in 1991,” as she puts it — one of the many ghosts summoned to torment McGrory before he can move on to whatever comes next.
For Haefner, the production marks a return to a venue that helped shape her transatlantic career. She first performed at Barons Court Theatre in 2023 with her one-act comedy 2-Faces, a show that went on to the Edinburgh Fringe and earned a string of enthusiastic reviews. “I found myself laughing excessively,” wrote critic Kat Masterson at the time, while AWAZ 107.2 praised her “unique and engaging performance”. The show went on to draw crowds six times the Fringe average — an achievement she still describes with a mixture of pride and disbelief.
Since then, Haefner has carved out a reputation as a fast-paced, madcap comedic force whose work veers gleefully between the heightened and the heartfelt. She has written, produced and performed across stage and screen, including the award-winning mockumentary short 28 is Great, in which she played all five roles. She is currently developing NOT DEAD, a genre-bending mockumentary series loosely based on her life with Crohn’s Disease.
Her résumé also includes a credit on Saturday Night Live — albeit, she jokes, “as Kim Kardashian’s photo double”, a line she delivers with the kind of self-skewering comic timing that has become her signature.
Returning to London, she says, feels like a “full-circle moment”, not only because of her history with Barons Court Theatre but because of the strange, intimate emotional terrain of performing dark comedy in small spaces. “There’s something bizarre and beautiful about the ecosystem of tiny theatre rooms,” she says. “You’re inches from the audience, you’re doing something unhinged, and everyone is just… in it together.”
Alongside her acting work, Haefner has spent more than eight years as a chess tutor for children — a detail she offers with the same deadpan delivery as her Fringe anecdotes. “It’s all part of the same chaos,” she says. “Comedy, theatre, producing, teaching kids the Sicilian Defence. It’s all storytelling.”
With Retrospective, she hopes London audiences will embrace the show’s blend of afterlife absurdism and emotional bite. “It’s funny, it’s weird, it’s a little unhinged,” she says. “But so is grief. So is art. So is being alive — or dead, apparently.”
Barons Court Theatre is at 28a Comeragh Road, W14 9HR (nearest tubes: Barons Court and West Kensington).
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