Stars, shockers, psychos and evangelists: Rupert Goold's mighty end to his high-wire Almeida tenure

The Guardian

5 days ago

Rupert Goold, the outgoing artistic director of the Almeida theatre in London, has just announced his final programme, which he hopes captures the 'spirit and values' of his past 12 years at its helm. Does it?
Comprising 10 productions and four world premieres, it does contain all the signature-marks of Goold's tenure: a smattering of star names (including Josh O'Connor and Romala Garai, the former the American classic, Golden Boy, the latter in a version of A Doll's House by Anya Reiss); a big-ambition project with Jack Holden's adaptation of Alan Hollinghurst's Booker prize winning novel, The Line of Beauty, about 1980s gay life (how do you turn Hollinghurst's glorious prose into glorious theatre? We'll see this autumn, I suppose); and a revival of the musical thriller American Psycho, based on Bret Easton Ellis's book, which featured in Goold's first programme at the Almeida in 2013, and brings a nice circularity to this last one. A play about masculine psychopathy, it is in the mould of previous musicals that combined hard-edged subject matter with song, from Spring Awakening, featuring teen depression, rape and suicide, to the rise and fall of a TV evangelist, Tammy Faye (both of which Goold directed).
There is also another production by Rebecca Frecknall – a revival of Sarah Kane's searing play, Cleansed. Frecknall, a star director whom Goold has long championed, is joining Goold at the Old Vic as associate director when he takes over as its artistic director, so this does not mark the end of their impressive collaboration.
Few could dispute that Goold has made this little but mighty theatre, nestling in the heart of leafy north London, all the mightier. Openings there have become unmissable events and many have transferred to the West End, including American Psycho (then to Broadway, in fact).
For good or bad, Goold is also one of the leading industry figures to have brought screen talent closer to the stage. In fairness, most of power celebrity castings have been well judged, alongside causing a stir – from Saoirse Ronan's Lady Macbeth to Daisy Edgar-Jones as Maggie in Cat on a Hot Tin Roof and Paul Mescal as Stanley in A Streetcar Named Desire, as well as musical collaborations with Elton John and Jake Shears for Tammy Faye.
But what I see as Goold's greatest accomplishment is his collaborations with the most exciting writers and directors of our time. It is this that has made this programming so formidable. He has a long track record with Robert Icke, each play ever more sensational, from his monumental Oresteia to The Doctor, which transferred to the West End, and Hamlet starring Andrew Scott.
There have been several plays by Mike Bartlett (the biggest highlight was King Charles III), as well as the supremely talented Omar Elerian and Beth Steel. These are rich associations, alongside those with Frecknall. I look forward to Alice Birch's Romans: A Novel, opening in September. Like Goold, Birch has shuttled between TV and stage work, having recently written television versions of Sally Rooney's Normal People and Conversations With Friends. She will make her Almeida debut with this examination of masculinity across two centuries.
Some of my personal highlights have been the more high-wire moments in Goold's tenure: Elerian's exquisite revival of Eugene Ionesco's The Chairs, a production of Jeremy O Harris's Daddy: A Melodrama, featuring a giant swimming pool across the span off the stage. And, of course, The Years, which is one of the best plays I have seen in the past five years – and in which Garai also featured. So several circularities – and the promise of a very strong swansong indeed.