{"id":647253,"date":"2026-10-15T15:02:14","date_gmt":"2026-10-15T15:02:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/647253\/"},"modified":"2026-10-15T15:02:14","modified_gmt":"2026-10-15T15:02:14","slug":"the-world-is-falling-apart-dominic-cooke-plans-boldly-political-first-season-at-almeida-theatre","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/647253\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018The world is falling apart\u2019: Dominic Cooke plans boldly political first season at Almeida | Theatre"},"content":{"rendered":"

A spate of highly political plays will feature in one of north London\u2019s most storied theatres next season, as its new artistic director says the world \u201cis falling apart\u201d.<\/p>\n

An exploration of Britain\u2019s decline featuring David Tennant and a searing series of new plays by Caryl Churchill are planned for Dominic Cooke\u2019s first season at the Almeida theatre<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s hard not to be political nowadays,\u201d Cooke said of the programme. \u201cI don\u2019t believe in art telling people what to think but I do think that we should be putting situations on to stage, into culture, that aren\u2019t being looked at. The world is falling apart and to not talk about that would be an abdication of responsibility.\u201d<\/p>\n

Cooke, who ran the Royal Court for several years, is a long-term friend of Tennant and will be directing him in a revival of John Osborne\u2019s The Entertainer.<\/p>\n

\u201cI am really excited about it,\u201d he said. \u201cI have known David since he was a drama student; I once stayed at his flat when I was doing a show in Edinburgh. I was so taken with his rigour and his intelligence.\u201d<\/p>\n

He proposed the idea of putting on this play with Tennant: \u201cI have been thinking about him doing this for a very long time. We are doing quite a radical repositioning of the play. It could really speak to our times; it deserves to be rescued. It has a lot about English identity and the empire. It\u2019s all about that moment in the 50s when England viewed itself a second-rate power for the first time in its history.\u201d<\/p>\n

Cooke said this was relevant to politics in the UK today: \u201cWe have this internalised memory of ourselves as this great nation. We are just one relatively big nation in world terms. There is this atmosphere of us trying to grapple with this change. Look at Brexit: that was about us ruling the waves, and obviously we aren\u2019t any more.\u201d<\/p>\n

Opening the season will be Three and a Bit, a collection of short plays by Churchill, who at 88 is \u201cstill as sharp as ever\u201d, according to Cooke. \u201cIt\u2019s thrilling; she is more than ever on the cutting edge, just as provocative, just as fascinating. She talks in Three and a Bit about being indifferent to suffering when it\u2019s not on your doorstep. It arrests you and creeps up on you in a very unlikely way.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Almeida will be joining other theatres, as well as cinemas and pubs, in banning Meta\u2019s new smart glasses<\/a>. \u201cThey are ghastly, aren\u2019t they? Because of the invasive nature of them, especially for women,\u201d Cooke said. \u201cFor years people have been stopped from filming during a performance. Definitely we would crack down on them. The problem with the bloody things is they are hard to notice and crack down on.\u201d<\/p>\n

Stars including Cate Blanchett, Rosamund Pike and Gillian Anderson have hit the news recently for telling audience members off for filming and being distracting during performances. \u201cIt is fair for theatres to want to control the use of phones, as people have the right to decide whether they want to be filmed or not,\u201d Cooke said. \u201cThe concentration required to give a leading performance on stage is immense, and it is easy to feel distracted if a phone goes off and there is a camera in your face.\u201d<\/p>\n

Another highlight of the season will be a production by the Almeida Young Company (ages 14-18), who will perform Angel to Olympus, an amalgamation myth by Flora Wilson Brown, directed by Takiyah Kamaria.<\/p>\n

Cooke wants to work more with young talent, after cuts to school drama programmes have dried up the pool of new directors. \u201cIt is a fascinating department in the theatre \u2013 they work with every single child in the borough. These things become more and more important when the arts are being reduced in education, they are being struck from the syllabus. It is so shortsighted,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cOne of the reasons I wanted the job is that I was concerned about the talent pipeline. We are trying to find ways through for emerging directors \u2013 we have a project coming down the line on that, which we will be talking more about soon. You only learn by doing, and you have to have the space to do that.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A spate of highly political plays will feature in one of north London\u2019s most storied theatres next season,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":647254,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[146,85,46],"class_list":["post-647253","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-entertainment","tag-entertainment","tag-il","tag-israel"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/647253","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=647253"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/647253\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/647254"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=647253"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=647253"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=647253"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}