Cooke Unveils Political Almeida Debut Starring Tennant — SkimNews
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- Dominic Cooke announced his first season as artistic director of the Almeida theatre, programming a slate of political plays and saying 'the world is falling apart,' so 'to not talk about that would be an abdication of responsibility.'
- David Tennant will star in a revival of John Osborne's The Entertainer under Cooke's direction, described as a 'radical repositioning' that draws an explicit parallel between 1950s post-imperial England and post-Brexit Britain — Cooke linked the play's themes of decline and empire directly to contemporary UK politics.
- Caryl Churchill, described by Cooke as 'still as sharp as ever' at 88, opens the season with Three and Bit, a collection of short plays about indifference to suffering 'not on your doorstep.'
- The Almeida theatre will ban Meta's new smart glasses alongside other theatres, cinemas and pubs; Cooke called them 'ghastly' due to their invasive nature, said they are 'hard to notice and crack down on,' and endorsed recent celebrities who have called out audience members for filming during performances.
- Cooke flagged cuts to school drama programmes as a growing threat to the 'talent pipeline' of emerging directors, noting the Almeida Young Company (ages 14-18) will stage Angel to Olympus by Flora Wilson Brown and teasing a forthcoming project to create space for new directors.
Why it matters: The Almeida is one of British theatre's most prestigious venues, and Cooke's decision to open with a Churchill world premiere and a politically reframed Osborne revival — directly tying 1950s imperial decline to Brexit — signals that overtly political programming is back at the heart of the London stage, while the Meta glasses ban positions theatres, including the Almeida, as a growing bloc pushing back on wearable surveillance in live performance.
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