Almeida Announces New Season, Including OUR TOWN

The Almeida Theatre today announces its body of work for the autumn: a World Premiere of a new work by Alecky Blythe will be directed by Joe Hill-Gibbins and the London Premiere of David Cromer's acclaimed production of Thornton Wilder's Our Town.

Also announced today is the West End transfer of Mike Bartlett's King Charles III to the Wyndham's Theatre in September.

The Young Friends of The Almeida will present Last Words You'll Hear, directed by Almeida Director-in-Residence, Whitney Mosery, at the Latitude Festival in July.

King Charles III will be the fourth production to transfer from the Almeida within the last year. Chimerica played to sell-out audiences at the Harold Pinter Theatre, Richard Eyre's Olivier Award-winning Ghosts played at the Trafalgar Studios from last December and Robert Icke and Duncan Macmillan's acclaimed production of 1984, currently playing at the Playhouse Theatre, has just extended its run by five weeks until 23 August.

THE SEASON...

World Premiere

LITTLE REVOLUTION

26 August - 4 October
Press performances 3 September - 4pm and 7pm

In the summer of 2011, London was burning. Alecky Blythe took her Dictaphone to the streets.

After the ground-breaking London Road (National Theatre), Alecky Blythe returns with a new play about the 2011 Riots. For this world premiere production, she is reunited with director Joe Hill-Gibbins following their acclaimed production ofThe Girlfriend Experience (Young Vic/ Royal Court/ Drum Theatre Plymouth).

Little Revolution will be designed by Ian MacNeil, with costumes by Holly Waddington, lighting design by Guy Hoareand sound design by Paul Arditti.

The production will include a community chorus recruited from Islington and Hackney by the Almeida Projects Team. They will perform alongside a professional company. Casting is to be announced.

Playwright and screenwriter Alecky Blythe won a Time Out Award for her first play Come Out Eli. In 2003, she set up Recorded Delivery (Verbatim Theatre Company). In 2009, her production of The Girlfriend Experience transferred from the Royal Court to the Young Vic, and in 2010 Do We Look Like Refugees? won a Fringe First Award at the Edinburgh Festival. London Road, which she co-authored with composer Adam Cork, won Best Musical at the Critics' Circle Awards and was revived in 2012 at the National Theatre in the Olivier after its sell-out run in the Cottesloe in 2011. She is currently adapting London Road for film with BBC Films and Cuba Pictures. Alecky was also involved in Headlong's Decade, and wrote and co-directed The Riots; In their Words, a drama documentary for BBC2. Her most recent play Where Have I Been All My Life? was produced at the New Vic Theatre in April 2012.

Joe Hill-Gibbins' recent work includes Powder Her Face for ENO and Edward II at the National Theatre. His work for the Young Vic, where he is an Associate Artist, includes The Changeling, The Glass Menagerie, The Beauty Queen of Leenane, A Respectable Wedding and short film Bed Trick, which he also co-wrote. He last collaborated with Alecky Blythe on The Girlfriend Experience for the Young Vic and Royal Court/Drum Theatre Plymouth. His work at the Royal Court includes The Village Bike, Bliss, Family Plays and A Girl in a Car With a Man. He was the 2002 winner of the James Menzies-Kitchin Trust Young Director's Award with his production of A Thought in Three Parts at BAC.

OUR TOWN
by Thornton Wilder

9 October - 29 November
Press Night 17 October

We grow-up, we fall in love, we have families and we die. That is our story.

Performed on a bare stage with minimal props, two people fall in love, marry, and live out their lives as a small American town becomes an allegory for everyday life.

Award-winning US actor-director David Cromer directs this intimate, stripped back version of Wilder's iconic American play. Cromer's acclaimed production of Our Town ran for over a year at the Barrow Theatre in New York where it won multiple awards. It was subsequently revived in Los Angeles and Boston. With Cromer reprising his role as Stage Manager, this will be the UK premiere of his definitive version of Wilder's classic.

Our Town will be designed by Michele Spadaro and Stephen Dobay, with costumes by Alison Siple, music byJonathan Mastro and lighting by Heather Gilbert. The Associate Director will be Michael Padden.

David Cromer is the 2010 recipient of the MacArthur Fellowship. His recent productions include Women or Nothing at The Atlantic, Nikolai and the Others at Lincoln Center, Really Really at MCC in NYC (starring Zosia Mamet), Sweet Bird of Youth (starring Diane Lane) at the Goodman Theater (Chicago), Tribes at Barrow Street in NYC, House of Blue Leaves on Broadway (starring Ben Stiller) and Brighton Beach Memoirs on Broadway. Cromer's work has garnered multiple awards throughout the US, working with companies such as Steppenwolf Theatre and Big Game Theatre. He is also an acclaimed actor and is currently appearing with Denzel Washington on Broadway in A Raisin In The Sun.

Influential American novelist and playwright Thornton Wilder lived from 1897-1975. He won three Pulitzer Prizes - for the plays Our Town and The Skin of Our Teeth and the novel The Bridge of San Luis Rey. In 1968, his novel The Eighth Day received the National Book Award. Wilder's play Matchmaker ran on Broadway from 1955-1957, and was later adapted into the musical Hello, Dolly!

Tickets for the two new productions will go on sale to Almeida Members on 28 May and to the general public on 6 June. Tickets for King Charles III at Wyndham's Theatre will go on sale exclusively through the Almeida Box Office on 28 May and on general sale on 6 June.

Box Office 020 7359 4404 (10am - 7.30pm)
Online almeida.co.uk

NEXT AT THE ALMEIDA...

MR BURNS
A post electric play
By Anne Washburn

5 June - 19 July
Press Night 12 June

Following the success of 1984, Almeida Associate Director Robert Icke directs the European Premiere of Anne Washburn's Mr Burns.

It's the end of everything in contemporary America. A future without power. But what will survive?

Mr Burns asks whether the stories we tell make us the people we are, explodes the boundaries between pop and high culture and, when society has crumbled, imagines the future of America's most famous TV family.

The company includes Fiona Digney, Adrian der Gregorian, Demetri Goritsas, Adey Grummet, Michael Henry,Justine Mitchell, Wunmi Mosaku, Annabel Scholey, Michael Shaeffer and Jenna Russell.

Mr Burns will be designed by Tom Scutt who most recently worked on the Almeida's current production of King Charles III. Philip Gladwell will design the lighting, sound design will be by Tom Gibbons, with joint composition and musical direction by Orlando Gough and Michael Henry.

Robert Icke is Associate Director at the Almeida. Most recently he wrote and directed 1984 with Duncan Macmillan. The acclaimed production enjoyed great success at the Almeida and is now playing to packed houses in the West End. Robert was previously Associate Director at Headlong where he worked with Rupert Goold to conceive and developDecade, directed Boys by Ella Hickson and a UK tour of Romeo and Juliet. Elsewhere, his theatre credits include The Alchemist at Liverpool Playhouse and Catalysta at Ovalhouse.

Anne Washburn's other plays include The Internationalist, Apparition, The Communist Dracula Pageant, I Have Loved Strangers, The Small, The Ladies and A Devil at Noon.

AND ELSEWHERE...

Sonia Friedman Productions, Eleanor Lloyd Productions and Tulchin Bartner Productions in association with 1001 Nights, Rupert Gavin, JFL Theatricals/GHF Productions, Scott M. Delman, Scott & Brian Zeilinger/James Lefkowitz present
The Headlong, Nottingham Playhouse and Almeida Theatre production of
1984
By George Orwell
A new adaptation created by Robert Icke and Duncan Macmillan

Playhouse Theatre, London
Until 23 August

Robert Icke and Duncan Macmillan's critically acclaimed adaptation of George Orwell's dystopian masterpiece is at the West End's Playhouse Theatre until 23 August, having extended its run by five weeks, due to popular demand.

1984 is written and directed by Robert Icke and Duncan Macmillan, set and costume designed by Chloe Lamford, with lighting designed by Natasha Chivers, sound designed by Tom Gibbons and video designed by Tim Reid.Originally produced by Headlong and Nottingham Playhouse, 1984 had its world premiere at Nottingham Playhouse in September and went on to enjoy a hugely successful UK tour and a 7-week run at the Almeida.

George Orwell's 1984, published in 1949, is one of the most influential novels in recent history, with its chilling depiction of perpetual war, pervasive government surveillance and incessant public mind-control. Its ideas have become our ideas, and Orwell's fiction is often said to be our reality. Filtering the spirit and the ambition of the novel through the lens of contemporary culture, this radical new staging explores surveillance culture, identity and how thinking you can fly might actually be the first step to flying.

Sonia Friedman Productions, Stuart Thompson Productions and the Almeida Theatre present
the Almeida Theatre production of
KING CHARLES III
By Mike Bartlett
Directed by Rupert Goold

Wyndham's Theatre
2 September - 29 November
Press Night 11 September

The Almeida's acclaimed production of King Charles III will transfer to the Wyndham's Theatre for a limited season previewing from Monday 2 September with a press performance on Thursday 11 September. Tim Pigott-Smith will once again play Charles. The cast also includes Richard Goulding, Nyasha Hatendi, Adam James, Margot Leicester, Tom Robertson, Nicholas Rowe, Tafline Steen and Lydia Wilson. Further casting is to be announced.

The Queen is dead: after a lifetime of waiting, the prince ascends the throne. A future of power. But how to rule?

Mike Bartlett's controversial play explores the people underneath the crowns, the unwritten rules of our democracy, and the conscience of Britain's most famous family. The production is playing to sell-out crowds at the Almeida until 31 May, and has received international critical acclaim.

Directed by the Almeida's Artistic Director Rupert Goold, King Charles III is designed by Tom Scutt, music composed by Jocelyn Pook, with lighting by Jon Clark and sound by Paul Arditti.

LAST WORDS YOU'LL HEAR

Latitude Festival
18 to 20 July

For a digital generation, panic over the invasion of technology into our lives is as quaint as the fear that photographs might steal our souls. We don't lament what's lost. We aren't afraid.

Almeida Director-in-Residence, Whitney Mosery, directs a new piece devised by the Young Friends of the Almeida. Young performers, weave together original music and dramatic narrative to challenge the assumption that self-profiling has replaced self-reflection.

Young Friends of the Almeida is a membership programme for young people aged 15 - 25 offering workshops, projects and work placements. All activities are led by creatives from the Almeida's main body of producing theatre. Young Friends of the Almeida is part of Almeida Projects - the Almeida's innovative programme of work for, and by, young people aged 13 to 25.

The Almeida Theatre

The Almeida Theatre was founded by Pierre Audi in 1980; his successors were Jonathan Kent and Ian McDiarmid in 1990, and Michael Attenborough in 2002. Productions including Hamlet, with Ralph Fiennes in 2005, Rufus Norris'Festen, Ruined by Lynn Nottage and most recently Chimerica and Ghosts have given the theatre international renown. This year the Almeida won eight Olivier Awards including Best Actress, Best Actor in a Supporting Role, Best New Play, Best Director and Best Revival. In summer 2013, Rupert Goold joined the Almeida from Headlong as Artistic Director. His first production as Artistic Director was American Psycho: A new musical thriller. This was followed by King Charles III which is currently running at the Almeida until 31 May and transfers to the West End in September.

Almeida Projects delivers a broad programme of high quality and innovative activity for, by and with young people. Rupert Goold programmes work that interrogates the present, digs up the past and imagines the future. Almeida Projects does this too, but with young people, predominantly aged 13 to 25. The work aims to inspire, challenge and radicalise those responsible for the theatre of the future, from artists to audiences. It seeks to energise and empower artists to raise the standard and status of working with young people within the industry.

Almeida Artistic Director Rupert Goold most recently directed King Charles III and American Psycho. Goold was Artistic Director of Headlong from 2005 until 2013 where his work included The Effect, ENRON, Earthquakes in Londonand Decade. His other theatre credits include The Last Days of Judas Iscariot at the Almeida, Macbeth at Chichester Festival Theatre, in the West End and on Broadway, The Merchant of Venice at the RSC and No Man's Land at The Gate and in the West End. He was Associate Director at the Royal Shakespeare Company from 2009 to 2012 and was Artistic Director of Northampton Theatres from 2002 to 2005. He has twice been the recipient of the Laurence Olivier, Critics' Circle and Evening Standard Awards for Best Director. For television he has directed Macbeth and Richard II for the BBC and Neal Street Productions, the latter of which was nominated for a BAFTA. His first feature film True Storystarring James Franco and Jonah Hill for Plan B and Fox Searchlight in New York will be released later this year.

The Almeida is grateful to its Principal Partner Aspen who will continue its partnership for a new three-year term. Aspenwas established in 2002 and is a leading global insurance and reinsurance company. www.aspen.co

The Almeida is supported using public funding by Arts Council England.

To post a comment, you must register and login.