Almeida Theatre

Almost a century on and I think we can be adult about the fact that 20th century American playwright Clifford Odets was never in the same league as the older Eugene O’Neill, or the younger Tennessee Williams and Arthur Miller (who both clearly owed him a debt). Golden Boy, from 1937, is a fine play but clunkier than any of those writers at their best, with rougher-drawn characters and a somewhat on-the-nose consideration of art versus violence as embodied by protagonist Joe Bonaparte, a sensitive Italian-American violinist who throws himself into the world of boxing, with ultimately tragic results.  But it’s boring to quibble about the flaws of a worthwhile revival: not every US play from the middle of the last century can be A View from the Bridge. Though elements of Sam Yates’ stylish take will doubtless prove to be divisive, I thought it was great, a crack cast meeting a bold vision that seeks to do more than just squeeze Golden Boy into standard naturalist tragedy shapes. The story opens with Tom, a down-on-his-luck boxer manager in ‘30s New York. He’s played by Daniel Mays with a not entirely dissimilar note to his Nathan Detroit in the Bridge Theatre's recent Guys & Dolls: all comic bluster and goggling eyes. Like Nathan, he even has a girlfriend he won’t marry, although Hayley Squires' Lorna is a more intense character, and the chief impediment to their wedded bliss is that Tom already has a wife.  Business is bad, but then step into the ring – first metaphorically,...

Although Rupert Goold physically checked out from the Almeida after his revival of American Psycho, this is the last of him: Desire Under the Elms is the final piece of programming in his golden tenure at the Islington theatre, with successor Dominic Cooke’s plans for the future still currently unknown, but presumably kicking in in the new year.  The last play, then, is Eugene O’Neill’s Greek-modelled 1924 tragedy Desire Under the Elms, which follows the goings on at a farmstead in 1850s New England where father Ephraim Cabot and son Eben tussle over ownership of the farm and the affections of the elderly Ephraim’s much younger new wife, Abbie. The play is directed by Ebenezer Bamgboye, with a cast headed by Zackary Momoh as Eben: needless to say the decision to make the Cabots Black is somewhat charged with meaning in a play set in the middle of the 19th century. Abbie will be played by Kelly Gough, which is a curious piece of casting as the only other major London revival this century – at the Lyric Hammersmith in 2012 – starred her sister Denise Gough in the same role.

The extremely unassuming name belies the fact that Three and a Bit is the latest work from Caryl Churchill, probably Britain’s greatest living playwright and a good pal of new Almeida boss Dominic Cooke, who has rather impressively deployed her for the second time despite this technically being his first piece of programming (October’s standalone short play Triumph was surely his work too). Anyway, Three and Bit follows Churchill’s Glass. Kill. Bluebeard. Imp. and Love and Information in being a compilation of playlets directed by James Macdonald.  Beyond that we have no real idea what the deal is: the official desciption runs  Go on then.  You’re sure you want to?  I want to see if you can because I’m sure you can’t. Has Dex met a conjuror with something up his sleeve — or someone much worse?  What did Pete do to afford a second-hand robot?  Dance with Uncle, or what might happen to you?  And  A day that can only get better. …which isn’t entirely illuminating but we can assume there will be three (and a bit) short plays, and there’s surely a chance one of them will be Triumph. Oh, and they’ll probably all be headspinningly brilliant exercises in subversive concision by the last of the twentieth century titans.