[title]
We’ve known for a while that Rupert Goold – the man who transformed the Almeida from chintzy backwater to London’s most important theatre – would be stepping down to take over at the Old Vic, and that he’d be taking his chief lieutenant director Rebecca Frecknall with him. What we’ve had no idea of is a timeframe. Until today (May 28).
The bad news is that Goold is definitely off, and that he’ll direct his final production for the theatre early next year, with Frecknall bowing out in the summer.
The good news is that if you’ve enjoyed the last 12 years of his programming then there’s still quite a lot more to come: today’s final announcement takes us right up to the end of next year, encompassing ten productions. Although we will presumably find out who Goold’s successor is fairly soon, there’s clearly no rush: their first show seems unlikely to run any sooner than January 2027.
It’s almost too big to call ‘a season’, but this final tranche of shows looks pretty mouthwatering, combining the sense of zeitgeist and event that’s always dominated Goold’s programming from the off with the embrace of writers and directors of colour that was learned on the way after some initial criticism of his Almeida as a white boys’ club.
Without further ado, then! The first show to be announced is a smaller one: 81 (Life) (Aug 21-23) is a community theatre show by playwright Rhianna Illube and 81 people from the Islington community. It’s billed as part poem, part game-show and part play, and follows 60 strangers invited to a park at sunset, each grappling with something big.
The first full run comes from the visionary Alice Birch, her first original play in years. The inscrutably titled Romans: A Novel (Sep 9-Oct 11) is an examination of masculinity and how male narratives have shaped the world from the nineteenth century to the present that will star Andor’s Kyle Soller in his first stage performance since the pandemic. The rather opaque description includes the lines ‘He is up by 4am for weights, cardio, ice bath. He is recording a podcast. He is living as a badger’. It’s directed by Sam Pritchard. Expect brilliance.
Next up and massive name director Michael Grandage returns to the Almeida for the first time this century to direct Jack Holden’s adaptation of Alan Hollinghurst’s landmark depiction of Thatcher’s Britain The Line of Beauty (Oct 21-Nov 29).
Rising star playwright Sam Grabiner got his big break at Soho Theatre with his play Boys On the Verge of Tears, for which he managed to bag big name director James Macdonald. The two reunite for Grabiner’s new play Christmas Day (Dec 9-Jan 10 2026), a dark comedy about a north London Christmas family gathering on… Christmas Day.
Goold’s final show will be a revival of his 2013 production of Duncan Sheik’s musical adaptation of Bret Easton Ellis’s provocative yuppie satire American Psycho (Jan 24-Mar 14 2026). It’s an interesting show to bring back: its original incarnation starred Matt Smith at the height of his immediate post-Doctor Who fame, but never transferred to the West End (reportedly because Smith wasn’t up for it). It opened on Broadway in 2016 with a different cast and tanked fairly hard. Could Goold’s hope here be to finally secure it a hit West End run? We’ll probably know better when we find out who has been cast as murderous banker Patrick Bateman.
The brilliant actor Romola Garai has popped up at the Almeida a couple of times during Goold’s tenure, in the coruscating The Writer and recent West End smash The Years. She’ll star in Ibsen’s proto-feminist landmark A Doll’s House (Mar 31-May 16 2026), in a new production by leftfield director Joe Hill-Gibbins, adapted by Anya Reiss.
Following that, another rising star Carmen Nasr will adapt British-Iranian filmmaker Babak Anvari’s acclaimed psychological horror Under the Shadow (Jun 2-Jul 4 2026) in a production by the excellent former Young Vic associate Nadia Latif. It’ll star Leila Farzad.
Frecknall's final show will be a revival for Sarah Kane's monumental work of love and torture Cleansed (Jul 21-Aug 22 2026), which will run ten years after Katie Mitchell’s National Theatre production gained infamy for the volume of fainting audience members (though Frecknall has an altogether more conciliatory style).
Actor Josh O’Connor will make his first stage appearance in 11 years to star in director Sam Yates’ revival of the great US playwright Clifford Odets’s Depression-era classic Golden Boy (Sep 8-Oct 31 2026) about a gifted young violinist who becomes sucked into the world of professional boxing.
Still with us? Okay: the last show of the Rupert Goold era will be another American classic, a revival of Eugene O’Neill’s sultry Greek tragedy rewrite Desire Under the Elms (Nov 10-Dec 19 2026), with Brit actor Zackary Momoh starring.
And that’s that, era over. It’s obviously quite a lot of shows and many of them won’t go on sale until next year. It seems likely – if not a given – that Goold’s first programming at the Old Vic will be in autumn 2026 and probably not announced for some time; his successor at the Almeida is likely to be named soon, but we’re probably a year away from a programming announcement. In the meantime – we’ve got plenty to go on!
Romans: A Novel and The Line of Beauty will go on general sale June 10. 81 (Life) will go on sale in the summer, and Christmas Day and American Psycho will follow in the autumn. All other shows will go on sale in 2026.
The best new London theatre shows to book for in 2025.
Indhu Rubasingham has announced her first season at the National Theatre.