Almeida Theatre announce new 2004-05 productions

Almeida Theatre announce new productions

The Almeida Theatre annnounce productions from Sep 2004 to April 2005, which includes: new musical Brighton Rock (20 Sep to 13 Nov 04); Earthly Paradise by Peter Whelan (18 Nov 04 to 8 Jan 05); Macbeth starring Simon Russell Beale (13 Jan 05 to 5 Mar 05); Hedda Gabler starring Eve Best (10 Mar 05 to 30 Apr 05)

Full details below.....

Brighton Rock
Giles Havergal's dramatisation of Graham Greene's classic novel, Brighton Rock, opens on 5 Oct 04, following previews from 20 Sep 04, and booking to 13 Nov04. (Public Booking opens 19 May 2004)

It is co-produced by Almeida / Bill Kenwright, directed by Michael Attenborough, designed by Lez Brotherston, lighting by Tim Mitchell, choreography by Karen Bruce. Musical direction and arrangements by Steven Edis, sound by John Leonard and fights by Terry King.

A gang war is raging through the dark underworld of 1930's Brighton. Pinky, malign and ruthless, has killed a man. Caught up in the violence of the weekend, the only incriminating witness to the murder is Rose, a 16 year old Catholic girl with a memory for faces and eyes only for Pinky. A wedding would buy her silence, but though Pinky doesn't believe in love and marriage. Believing he can escape retribution, he is unprepared for the courageous, life-embracing music hall artiste Ida Arnold, who is determined to see justice done. Brighton Rock is a thrilling study of gangland rivalry and the psychology of a psychotic seventeen year old Catholic boy.

Earthly Paradise
by Peter Whelan, directed by Robert Delamere opens on 24 Nov 04, following previews from 18 Nov 04, and booking to 8 Jan 04. (Public Booking opens 28 Sep 2004)

When Topsy - poet and designer William Morris - takes a dreamy Oxfordshire manor house for the summer of 1871 the whisper goes round that it is to make the very public affair between his wife Janey and close friend Dante Gabriel Rossetti less conspicuous. The tensions between the three of them create an emotional undertow that keeps threatening to break surface. When Morris leaves them to their sanctuary and goes abroad as the alchemy of love works unexpected changes.

Macbeth
by William Shakespeare, directed by John Caird, starring Simon Russell Beale opens on 20 Jan 04, following previews from 13 Jan 04, and booking to 5 Mar 04. (Public Booking opens 28 Sep 2004)

Story of ambition and cruelty begins with Macbeth and Banquo returning victorious from battle. When they are hailed by three plotting witches, the temptations of power and possession of the Scottish throne are proffered. What follows is a bloody battle between guilt and ambition, man and country, and husband and wife.

Hedda Gabler
byby Henrik Ibsen, starring Eve Best opens on 16 Mar 04, following previews from 10 Mar 04, and booking to 30 Apr 04. (Public Booking opens 28 Sep 2004)

Directed by Richard Eyre, design by Rob Howell, with lighting by Peter Mumford.

Set in the Norwegian home of George and Hedda Tesman near the turn of the twentieth century, Ibsen's Hedda Gabler reveals a woman struggling in a world that is, for her, devoid of excitement and enchantment. Filled with a lust for life, Hedda is consumed with a passion that is uncontrolable within the confines of her bourgeois existence.