Almeida Theatre

Having made her name by working through Tennessee Williams’s core plays, the Almeida’s Rebecca Frecknall now seems to be lining up the rest of the mid-twentieth century American canon. She’s already directed Cabaret and has Miller’s Death of a Salesman booked in at the National Theatre in a couple of years; and now she tries her hand at Eugene O’Neill. A Moon for the Misbegotten is O’Neill’s final play, that serves as a sequel to his great autobiographical work Long Day’s Journey Into Night (although somwhat confusingly the author famously didn’t allow the first play to be produced in his lifetime). Less bleak than the first work, A Moon… is set on an isolated, crumbing Connecticut farm and follows a group of characters who live or visit the place. Ruth Wilson will play Josie Hogan, the quick tongued daughter of tenant farmer Phil Hogan; Michael Shannon will play their grieving, alcoholic landlord James Tyrone Jr, aka an older version of Jamie Tyrone from Long Day’s Journey. Shannon actually played the role in a 2016 Broadway production of Long Day’s Journey, meaning this will potentially serve as a sequel for him, if not for many audience members.

Although she turned in a fine adaptation of Lorca‘s The House of Bernarda Alba for the National Theatre a couple of years ago, it’s been an age since we’ve had a ‘proper’ play from the wonderful Alice Birch, whose Anatomy of a Suicide and Revolt. She Said. Revolt Again. were two of the great British stage works of the ’10s. There’s no secret what she’s been up to since: her screenwriting career has massively taken off, most notably with Lady Macbeth and the screen adaptation of Normal People, although she’s pretty damn busy generally.  Anyway, long story short, Romans: A Novel is her first ‘original’ play in years, which is cause for celebration in and of itself. Plus it sounds like she’s lost none of her ambition: the somewhat cryptically titled play is a dissection of masculinity from the nineteeth century to the present and the way in which male narratives shape the world as we know. Precisely what it’ll involve is very much TBC, but it will star Andor’s Kyle Soller and will be directed by Sam Pritchard, Birch’s husband. 

Some of superstar director Michael Grandage’s first London shows were at the Almeida Theatre. But that was all a long time ago: he’s not been back this century. Until now: as part of Rupert Goold’s final season, Grandage returns to direct a very juicy prospect indeed. The Line of Beauty is rising star playwright Jack Holden’s adaptation of Alan Hollinghurt’s classic novel of Thatcherite Britain, set in 1983 as it follows protagonist Nick as he gets sucked into an alluring, disconcerting world of extreme privilige in a rapidly changing country. There’s no word on casting yet, but you wouldn’t put it paat Grandage to land a name – though his own and that of the book are doubtless quite enough to sell out the show.