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Time Out
4 days ago
- Entertainment
- Time Out
Rupert Goold will end his tenure at London's Almeida Theatre with a monumental 18 months of programming
We've known for a while that Rupert Goold – the man who transformed the Almeida from chintzy backwater to London's most important theatre – would be stepping down to take over at the Old Vic, and that he'd be taking his chief lieutenant director Rebecca Frecknall with him. What we've had no idea of is a timeframe. Until today (May 28). The bad news is that Goold is definitely off, and that he'll direct his final production for the theatre early next year, with Frecknall bowing out in the summer. The good news is that if you've enjoyed the last 12 years of his programming then there's still quite a lot more to come: today's final announcement takes us right up to the end of next year, encompassing ten productions. Although we will presumably find out who Goold's successor is fairly soon, there's clearly no rush: their first show seems unlikely to run any sooner than January 2027. It's almost too big to call 'a season', but this final tranche of shows looks pretty mouthwatering, combining the sense of zeitgeist and event that's always dominated Goold's programming from the off with the embrace of writers and directors of colour that was learned on the way after some initial criticism of his Almeida as a white boys' club. Without further ado, then! The first show to be announced is a smaller one: 81 (Life) (Aug 21-23) is a community theatre show by playwright Rhianna Illube and 81 people from the Islington community. It's billed as part poem, part game-show and part play, and follows 60 strangers invited to a park at sunset, each grappling with something big. The first full run comes from the visionary Alice Birch, her first original play in years. The inscrutably titled Romans: A Novel (Sep 9-Oct 11) is an examination of masculinity and how male narratives have shaped the world from the nineteenth century to the present that will star Andor 's Kyle Soller in his first stage performance since the pandemic. The rather opaque description includes the lines 'He is up by 4am for weights, cardio, ice bath. He is recording a podcast. He is living as a badger'. It's directed by Sam Pritchard. Expect brilliance. Next up and massive name director Michael Grandage returns to the Almeida for the first time this century to direct Jack Holden's adaptation of Alan Hollinghurst's landmark depiction of Thatcher's Britain The Line of Beauty (Oct 21-Nov 29). Rising star playwright Sam Grabiner got his big break at Soho Theatre with his play Boys On the Verge of Tears, for which he managed to bag big name director James Macdonald. The two reunite for Grabiner's new play Christmas Day (Dec 9-Jan 10 2026), a dark comedy about a north London Christmas family gathering on… Christmas Day. Goold's final show will be a revival of his 2013 production of Duncan Sheik's musical adaptation of Bret Easton Ellis's provocative yuppie satire American Psycho (Jan 24-Mar 14 2026). It's an interesting show to bring back: its original incarnation starred Matt Smith at the height of his immediate post- Doctor Who fame, but never transferred to the West End (reportedly because Smith wasn't up for it). It opened on Broadway in 2016 with a different cast and tanked fairly hard. Could Goold's hope here be to finally secure it a hit West End run? We'll probably know better when we find out who has been cast as murderous banker Patrick Bateman. The brilliant actor Romola Garai has popped up at the Almeida a couple of times during Goold's tenure, in the coruscating The Writer and recent West End smash The Years. She'll star in Ibsen's proto-feminist landmark A Doll's House (Mar 31-May 16 2026), in a new production by leftfield director Joe Hill-Gibbins, adapted by Anya Reiss. Following that, another rising star Carmen Nasr will adapt British-Iranian filmmaker Babak Anvari's acclaimed psychological horror Under the Shadow (Jun 2-Jul 4 2026) in a production by the excellent former Young Vic associate Nadia Latif. It'll star Leila Farzad. Frecknall's final show will be a revival for Sarah Kane's monumental work of love and torture Cleansed (Jul 21-Aug 22 2026), which will run ten years after Katie Mitchell's National Theatre production gained infamy for the volume of fainting audience members (though Frecknall has an altogether more conciliatory style). Actor Josh O'Connor will make his first stage appearance in 11 years to star in director Sam Yates' revival of the great US playwright Clifford Odets's Depression-era classic Golden Boy (Sep 8-Oct 31 2026) about a gifted young violinist who becomes sucked into the world of professional boxing. Still with us? Okay: the last show of the Rupert Goold era will be another American classic, a revival of Eugene O'Neill's sultry Greek tragedy rewrite Desire Under the Elms (Nov 10-Dec 19 2026), with Brit actor Zackary Momoh starring. And that's that, era over. It's obviously quite a lot of shows and many of them won't go on sale until next year. It seems likely – if not a given – that Goold's first programming at the Old Vic will be in autumn 2026 and probably not announced for some time; his successor at the Almeida is likely to be named soon, but we're probably a year away from a programming announcement. In the meantime – we've got plenty to go on! Romans: A Novel and The Line of Beauty will go on general sale June 10. 81 (Life) will go on sale in the summer, and Christmas Day and American Psycho
Scotsman
6 days ago
- Entertainment
- Scotsman
David Greig on his final production at Edinburgh's Lyceum Theatre: 'it felt vital that this play be seen in Scotland'
Sign up to our Arts and Culture newsletter, get the latest news and reviews from our specialist arts writers Sign up Thank you for signing up! Did you know with a Digital Subscription to The Scotsman, you can get unlimited access to the website including our premium content, as well as benefiting from fewer ads, loyalty rewards and much more. Learn More Sorry, there seem to be some issues. Please try again later. Submitting... The American playwright Katori Hall was born in Memphis, Tennessee, 44 years ago; so it's perhaps not surprising that early in her career, when she was still only in her twenties, she was moved to write a play that revolves around one of the most momentous events ever to take place in her home city. On 4 April 1968, the great civil rights leader Martin Luther King was shot dead on the balcony of his room at the Lorraine Motel, Memphis. Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad The previous night, he had delivered his 'I Have Been To The Mountaintop' speech at a rally in the city, as part of an intense campaign tour. Hall's award-winning play – first seen in London in 2009 – is set in the hours following that speech, when King, alone in his room, encounters a hotel maid, Camae; a young woman with the face of an angel, who, it turns out, is something quite other than she seems. Now, the play is receiving its Scottish professional premiere at the Lyceum Theatre in Edinburgh. The production also marks the final production of David Greig's ten-year stint as artistic director of the theatre, as James Brining takes over the reins. Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad 'With the world in polarised chaos,' says David Greig, 'it just felt urgent and vital to me that this play be seen in Scotland. Caleb Roberts and Shannon Hayes in rehearsals for The Mountaintop PIC: Daniel Holden 'Dr King's 'I Have A Dream' speech was such a high point in postwar history, and his assassination a corresponding low. 'Both are the seeds of so much of the world we live in now; and Katori Hall's play is a modern classic, that tackles that moment head on.' In Edinburgh, the play will be directed by Rikki Henry, a young British director who has worked extensively in France and Germany in recent years, with Shannon Hayes playing Camae, and Caleb Roberts in the role of Martin Luther King. 'I first saw the play almost ten years ago, when it was revived at the Old Vic,' say Henry, 'and it really made me concentrate, and begin to see things differently. Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad 'It shows Martin Luther King in a new light, as a human being rather than an iconic hero, and I think there's a real urgency about reviving it now, when all these ideas are being challenged again. Caleb Roberts in rehearsals for The Mountaintop PIC: 'Towards the end of the play, King talks about legacy, and about passing on the baton of the huge campaigns he led. 'And I think that today, when there's so much political chaos, the question we have to ask is where is the baton? Who has it now, and how can we support them? "One thing the play makes clear, though, is that you don't have to be a celebrity to play your part, and to make an impact.' Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad 'I've been reading a lot about Dr King's life,' says Caleb Roberts, 'and watching film of him, of course, and certainly his presence is huge, and it's a challenge to capture that. "Without giving anything away, there are aspects of this production that make it easier to show how strong he was, physically as well as emotionally and intellectually. "But he was human, too; and I hope this play encourages people at least to see him a little differently. I know theatre can't often change people's minds; but it can maybe change their perspective a little, and I hope this play does that.' And Shannon Hayes agrees. 'I think one of the most important messages of this play is that no matter how low or small you are, or feel yourself to be, your actions still matter. Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad "Everybody has a shared responsibility in shaping what the future looks like, and no one can avoid that responsibility by putting the whole weight on the shoulders of a leader who is supposed to fix it all. "And if we can make people feel that shared responsibility for taking Dr King's legacy forward – well, then we'll be doing a good job, with this amazing play.
Yahoo
22-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
William Watson: Chatbots are changing everything and nothing
The novelist Anthony Horowitz has the 'diary' page in this week's Spectator magazine. The format is amusing occurrences and casual musings as the writer wends his way through his week. Halfway down the column, Horowitz recalls how as a teenager he used to 'slip into' the Old Vic theatre to see plays, experience 'something close to magic' and be left 'breathless.' But then the next entry abruptly announces: 'The last paragraph was written by ChatGPT.' Horowitz had asked it to write 100 words on theatre tickets in the style of Anthony Horowitz. He then analyzes where it did and didn't succeed. 'If I became breathless in a theatre, I'd expect St. John's Ambulance to remove me quickly,' and so on. But you could have fooled me! In fact, it did fool me, and it fooled most readers, I'd guess, which was Horowitz's point. We're well beyond the stage where AI produces oohs and aahs just for putting a noun and verb in each sentence and making sure they agree in number. It's now operating at a high level of fluency (though I should add that no bots were abused in the writing of this column.) It's impossible to imagine where something so powerful will take the world — though I expect Evan Solomon, our new minister of artificial intelligence, will spend lots of money trying. An under-wagered possibility is that after being turned upside down, the world will end up looking more or less the same. This would be consistent with Solow's Paradox, economics Nobelist Robert Solow's famous 1987 observation that: 'You can see the computer age everywhere but in the productivity statistics.' In a new study of AI adoption in Denmark, Anders Humlum of the University of Chicago and Emilie Vestergaard of the University of Copenhagen quote that line from Solow. And they come to a similar conclusion, as indicated by their study's title, 'Large Language Models, Small Labour Market Effects.' (Would a bot have got to such a taut summary of the message? I think not.) Not every occupation lends itself to using ChatGPT or similar chatbots. So the researchers look at only 11 where it's likely to be most handy, including: IT, HR and legal professionals, accountants, teachers, journalists and five others. It turns out Denmark is a very digitized place. Every Dane has 'a digital mailbox that Statistics Denmark can use to distribute survey invitations.' Moreover, Danes seem to check their digital mailboxes. The researchers sent out 115,000 survey invitations and got 25,000 completed responses covering 7,000 workplaces — a big sample and good response rate for this sort of thing. (Completed surveys were entered in a draw for a tax-free cash prize though we're not told how much.) Beyond its paradoxical bottom line, the paper's other (to my mind) surprising finding was just how much chatbots are already being used. Almost two-thirds of workers have used one 'at least a few times' and almost 20 per cent use them daily. Firms 'are now heavily invested,' with 43 per cent of workers 'explicitly encouraged to use them' and only six per cent not allowed to. Firms also do training: 30 per cent of employees have had some. When firms are involved, take-up is higher and there's less of a gender gap. When firms are neutral there's more take-up from men. (One Norwegian study of students found a gender gap largely reflected 'male students continuing to use the tools even when explicitly banned.') Firm-wide investments are 'particularly widespread in journalism and marketing and more limited in teaching.' Journalists (or their bots!) told the researchers they use AI to brainstorm 'story ideas, angles or interview questions,' to draft content, to fact-check and edit, to summarize 'research materials or interview transcripts' and, surprisingly, to ensure 'AI-generated content abides by journalistic ethics and standards.' They use a bot to decide whether their bot has been ethical? What's been the effect of using the new technology? Average reported time saving is 2.8 per cent, which seems low, given how powerful the bots are. What do people do with the time they save? Mainly other tasks. Also somewhat more of the same task. And more or longer breaks or leisure time. It seems no one answered 'mindless screen-scrolling' during the freed-up time, though we all know what a problem that now is. New technology allowing workers to turn to different tasks is a common effect and helps explain why automation typically doesn't displace labour wholesale: firms find new things for their workers to do. Which helps explain the labour market effects, which are: pretty much nothing. The researchers asked people directly whether 'they perceive AI chatbots to have affected their earnings.' No, said 99.6 per cent of respondents. William Watson: Get the Ozempic! Cabinet has grown by almost two-thirds in two months William Watson: Free trade is being replaced by crony trade What people perceive isn't always true, of course. But in this case Denmark's digital connectedness allowed the researchers to check on hours, earnings, total wages, total employment and so on in the firms where bots are used most. And nothing budged. It's early days yet but the papers' last line and the study's bottom line is that 'two years after the fastest technology adoption ever, labour market outcomes — whether at the individual or firm level — remain untouched.'
Irish Daily Mirror
22-05-2025
- Sport
- Irish Daily Mirror
Willie Mullins beats Nicky Henderson to purchase Cheltenham winner for €355,000
The serious jumping action may be on its summer break but that hasn't stopped the juggernaut training duo of Willie Mullins and Nicky Henderson clashing. It's at this time of the year that trainers look to recruit new talent for the 2025/26 National Hunt season and at the Doncaster sales on Wednesday, the top two trainers in Ireland and the UK locked horns in an attempt to purchase a potentially smart horse. Cheltenham bumper winner Poetisa was the standout name at the Goffs UK Spring Horses in Training and Point-to-Point Sale and not surprisingly both Willie Mullins and Nicky Henderson brought their sizable cheque books to buy the filly. Poetisa won a very competitive Cheltenham mares' bumper last month, at odds of 20-1, and connections had opted to sell the Toby Bulgin-trained daughter of Poet's Word. She wasn't long in the sales ring when the Mullins and Henderson camps made their move and began to tussle, with Henderson and his bloodstock agent Jerry McGrath's huge bid of £280,000 (€332,000) looking to have won the argument. But after a long pause, Harold Kirk, long-time talent scout to Willie Mullins, sealed the deal with a bid of £280,000 (€355,000). 'I thought she was gorgeous,' Kirk told the Racing Post. 'She's by a promising young sire and out of an Old Vic mare. She's a Cheltenham winner already and she'll only improve. She was very classy when she won. She's a lovely mare and hopefully she'll go down the mares' route over hurdles as there's a big programme for these mares now. 'She just looked like she had a lot of class. As an individual she's got loads of quality and a great mind. Everybody wants a Cheltenham winner. Okay, it wasn't at the festival but she can do no more than what she's done.' 'I thought she'd make between two (hundred thousand) and 250,000 but there's always going to be somebody else involved. If you're up against Nicky Henderson, you're going to have to be strong. I hope she's lucky now.' Poetisa had been bought by the Bulgins for £42,000 and Nicola Bulgin (wife of trainer Toby) said: She added: 'It was a hell of a price. We came close to selling one for three figures before, but nothing like this. 'Nicky had been down to see her a few times and Willie had been on the phone to Toby about her, so we knew we were in the right place in the market. I have to say, the thrill of her winning still beats this, though.' Get the latest sports headlines straight to your inbox by signing up for free email.
Irish Independent
09-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Irish Independent
Rick O'Shea: One of America's smartest political minds makes a brave admission about Israel
Ta-Nehisi Coates admits he has a problem with an article he wrote in 2014 in The Message, while Seán Hewitt's Open, Heaven feels like a classic and What a Time to be Alive by Jenny Mustard will appeal to Sally Rooney fans Today at 21:30 Don't ever let anyone tell you that turning 50 is hard; turning 50 is a doddle. For me, it involved an eight-month series of arm-chancing trips to New York, Portugal and Iceland after I made sad puppy eyes at my impossibly lovely and soft-hearted wife. This week I turned 52, an age that is so unremarkable it seems pointless to mention it, let alone celebrate it. That has never stopped me before. I went to London and thoroughly enjoyed Conor McPherson's new play The Brightening Air at the Old Vic, was baffled but sort of entertained anyway by Here We Are, Stephen Sondheim's last musical – or half a musical if you want to be accurate – at the National Theatre, and I finally got to see the joyfully fun and incredibly complicated staging of My Neighbour Totoro.
