The Almeida is busting out some serious big names for its new five-play season, which will run from Christmas until next summer and takes in a mix of classic and new dramas.
It’s a big one for the theatre’s associate director Rebecca Frecknall, best known for her West End production of Cabaret and her smash hit Tennessee Williams obscurity Summer and Smoke. She’ll return to Williams to direct the Almeida’s Christmas show – a revival of all-time classic Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (Dec 10-Feb 1 2025, pictured) that’ll feature recent Time Out cover star Kingsley Ben-Adir plus Daisy Edgar-Jones and Lenny James.
That’ll be followed next year by a new play Otherland (Feb 11-Mar 15 2025) by playwright Chris Bush about a separating couple facing up to the terror of change, following which brainbox director Omar Elerian will tackle Eugene Ionesco’s surrealist satire Rhinoceros (Mar 25-Apr 26 2025). That’s folowed by big name director Lyndsey Turner tackling Ava Pickett’s new play 1536 (May 6-Jun 7 2025), about a group of ordinary Essex women who find the drama around the trial and execution of Anne Boleyn uncomfortably close to home.
Finally we go to Frecknall again, who’ll direct Ruth Wilson and US star Michael Shannon in A Moon for the Misbegotten (Jun 17-Aug 16 2025), the great American playwright Eugene O’Neill’s darkly intimate sequel to his masterpiece ‘Long Day’s Journey Into Night’”.
It’s a hard hitting season, with the two Frecknall-directed plays sure to sell out at a rate of knots: Cat On a Hot Tin Roof will go on sale Friday September 27 and you’d better get in there quick; the rest will go on sale at a later date.
The best new London shows to book for in 2024 and 2025.
Brie Larson will make her West End debut in Elektra.
Stay in the loop: sign up to our free Time Out London newsletter for the best of the city, straight to your inbox.