The Rubenstein Kiss is the debut play by British playwright James Phillips, and the winner of the John Whiting Award and the TMA Award for Best New Play.

The play, set in the 1950s and the 1970s, was inspired by an iconic photograph of the nuclear spies Julius and Ethel Rosenberg

Julius and Ethel Rosenberg

Ethel Greenglass Rosenberg and Julius Rosenberg were American communists who were convicted and executed in 1953 for conspiracy to commit espionage during a time of war. The charges related to their passing information about the atomic bomb to the Soviet Union...

. It was premiered at the Hampstead Theatre

Hampstead Theatre

Hampstead Theatre is a theatre in the vicinity of Swiss Cottage and Belsize Park, in the London Borough of Camden. It specialises in commissioning and producing new writing, supporting and developing the work of new writers. In 2009 it celebrates its 50 year anniversary.The original theatre was...

, London 2005, starring Samantha Bond, Will Keen and Gary Kemp.