Richard Eyre returns to Almeida, 2012 festival announced

Set deep in the Hampshire countryside the play tells the tragic story of Edward Thomas, a disaffected husband and tormented writer whose life is turned around in 1913 when he meets American poet Robert Frost. The friendship helps propel Edwards towards huge success as a poet
but then the Great War arrives and he enlists…

Nick Dear’s work was seen at the National Theatre last year where his adaptation of Frankenstein was directed by Danny Boyle and earned joint Best Actor Olivier awards for Benedict Cumberbatch and Jonny Lee Miller on Sunday.

The production will feature designs by Bob Crowley , lighting by Peter Mumford and sound by John Leonard. Casting will be announced shortly.

Richard Eyre was director of the National Theatre from 1988 to 1997. His work includes the
award-winning production of Arthur Miller’s The Crucible on Broadway, the world premières of Nicholas Wright’s Vincent in Brixton and The Reporter (both for the National Theatre) and the stage musicals Mary Poppins and Betty Blue Eyes for Cameron Mackintosh.

The Almeida has also announced details of its 2012 festival celebrating the best of international theatre. Over four weeks (2 –28 July) the Almeida Festival 2012 will feature productions by Inua Ellams, Inspector Sands, Lost Dog and Custom/Practice with return visits from the TEAM, Greyscale and Young Friends of the Almeida.

Inua Ellams – Knight
Watch: Poet, writer, teacher and performer Inua
Ellams opens the festival with a 45 minute site-specific performance
accompanied by two musicians, Michael keeps away from the warring
tribes until a passerby helps him out of a tight situation.
Instantly, he is pulled into the culture he has tried to escape. As
the city spirals out of control around him and battle lines are
drawn, will Michael succeed in ending the war? Knight
Watch will be performed on 2 and 3 July 2012 at 7.30pm at
an off-site venue yet to be announced.

Inspector Sands –
Mass-Observation: In 1937 a young woman
is discovering the world; in 2012 a young man gets lost in his
grandfather’s care home. Mass-Observation, the latest show from the
award-winning Inspector Sands is about 95 years that have gone by in
a flash and an afternoon that lasts an eternity. This devised work
will play from 5 to 14 July 2012.

Custom/Practice – A
Midsummer Night’s Dream: This edited production
of moves from a bleak modern, inner city school detention room to
the fantastical world of princes and lovers, forests and fairies.
Performances will take place from 16 to 21 July 2012.

Lost Dog – It Needs
Horses / Home for Broken Turns: The first tells
the tale of two down at heel performers and their increasingly
desperate attempts to entertain the crowd while the second (a new
work from Lost Dog) is the story of a faded ringmaster and his
bedraggled assistant. Performances from 23 to 28 July 2012.

Greyscale – Gods Are
Fallen and All Safety Gone: Written and directed
by Selma Dimitrijevic, the play presents a lifetime of conversations,
condensed into four versions of the same moment and examines what
happens when people discover their parents are flawed human beings.
Performances are on 18 and 19 July 2012 at 7.30pm.

The Team –
RoosevElvis: New York company the
Theatre of the Emerging American Moment returns to London for the
first time since 2009 when it presented Architecting
at the Barbican. In RoosevElvis “an enormous man strides through
western landscapes in a place called ‘the Badlands’. His dead wife
visits him at night in fever dreams. And somewhere else, warmer and
decades into the future, in a place called ‘Graceland’ another man
lies face down on a toilet”. Performances from 9 to 12 July
2012.

The festival will also feature
performances by the Young Friends of the Almeida of Parallax
by Rebecca Prichard and The Mini Dream, a
shortened version of Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s
Dream.