Another evening, another theatre, feeding my ever-voracious appetite for drama, this time in North London at the Almeida yesterday.
A preview performance of Mike Bartlett’s play Albion. The play was performed, by substantially the same cast, just over two years ago to sold-out houses and rave reviews so I had booked ahead a while ago to secure a couple of decent seats.
I loved this production. I particularly loved the staging – a garden which changed with the seasons, from winter through summer then autumn. The planting for summer was performed by the cast in an interlude, with music – and similarly when the plants were supposed to have died away, they removed them and scattered dead leaves on the lawn. More and more flowers or leaves.
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So, these were bucolic surroundings for some truly emotional scenes: grief dividing strong women in a garden. Massive simplification and I’m not going to try and explain more here other than to add that there was an actual rainstorm, a very affecting ghost and quite a lot of mud. There’s a lot to think about in relation to my country in its newly post-Brexit era – perhaps a significant reason to revive the production so soon.
It had crossed my mind at the time of the summer planting that I was in danger of enjoying the gardening display above the acting but, for a number of reasons, not least the individual and ensemble performances, the story touched and moved me. The best of 2020 so far.
Also, there was a young man who took his top off. Unnecessary?