The Tony Award-nominated star Victoria Hamilton will lead the cast of Mike Bartlett’s new play Albion, the first of three shows announced in the Almeida Theatre’s new 2017/18 season.
In an exciting line-up, the season will feature two world premieres, the rare revival of a Tennessee Williams’ classic, and the launch of the venue’s second series of digital films in the Figures of Speech project.
The announcement also confirmed the West End transfer of Ink, with the widely lauded play moving to the Duke of York’s Theatre from 9 September.
Bartlett’s Albion (Tuesday 10 October – Friday 24 November 2017) opens the new season, and marks the playwright’s first collaboration with Artistic Director Rupert Goold since their international and Olivier Award-winning production King Charles III.
Led by Hamilton (who starred as The Queen Mother in The Crown, and Anna in Doctor Foster), the play is set in the ruins of a garden in rural England, where one woman searches for seeds of hope amidst a dilapidated house which was once a home.
This will be followed by the world premiere of The Twilight Zone (Tuesday 5 December 2017 – Saturday 27 January 2018), based on the stories from the classic 1960s CBS television series. Adapted by Anne Washburn (Mr Burns: A Post Electric Play at the Almeida) and directed by Olivier Award winner Richard Jones (Too Clever By Half, Old Vic), the play seeks out the middle ground between light and shadow, science and superstition, and fear and knowledge: the eponymous Twilight Zone.
Bringing together stage magic and fantasy, the world premiere lands on stage for the first time in history, adapted from the seminal stories by Rod Serling, Charles Beaumont and Richard Matheson.
The final new production announced is Tennessee Williams’ Summer And Smoke (Saturday 24 February – Saturday 7 April 2018), a rare revival for the classic play about love, loneliness and self-destruction.
Set in the heat of a summer, a girl finds herself trapped between desire and fear in a life of obligation. With an ensemble cast led by Patsy Ferran (Speech And Debate, Trafalgar Studios) and direction from Rebecca Frecknall (Idomeneus; What Are They Like?), Summer And Smoke is a touching and heart-breaking tale of transformation.
The Figures of Speech series, a provocative anthology of digital films exploring the voices behind of visionary leadership, is set to continue with a second series of films to be released later this summer following the great success of the first series.
Derek Jacobi, Noma Dumezweni, Russell Tovey, Pearl Mackie and John Heffernan will lend their voices to the project, which aims to harness the power of performance to explore controversial political and social ideas from past and present.
For more information about, and to book your tickets for, the season, visit the Almeida Theatre’s website.