Almeida Theatre

Almeida Theatre, theatre, situated in Islington, London. The Almeida was founded by the Lebanese/French director Pierre Audi in a former lecture and musical hall that was originally built in 1837. The neo-classical building lay partially derelict until 1972, but after extensive renovation reopened in 1980 as a 300-seat thrust-stage theatre (see Theatre Stage Design). It soon became a centre for drama, music, and dance, staging in-house productions, receiving touring groups, and hosting the Almeida Festival, a focal point for new music and opera. The Almeida hosted works by new British companies Kick Theatre (see Deborah Warner) and Theatre de Complicité, and foreign practitioners such as the exiled Russian director Yuri Lyubimov, as well as new plays by Howard Barker, Botho Strauss, and Heiner Müller, gaining recognition as a modern, innovative venue with an international outlook.

In 1990 two actors from the theatre, the South African Jonathan Kent and the Scot Ian McDiarmid took over as joint artistic directors, establishing a full-time producing company and initiating a prodigious period of growth for the Almeida. An ambitious first season began with Howard Barker’s Scenes from an Execution starring Glenda Jackson, setting the tone for a decade in which the theatre’s reputation would soar, fuelled by Kent and McDiarmid’s audacious programming and success in attracting star names—Ralph Fiennes (Ivanov, 1997; by Anton Chekhov), Juliette Binoche (Naked, 1998; by Luigi Pirandello), and Kevin Spacey (The Iceman Cometh, 1998; by Eugene O’Neill) all performed for minimum wages on its north London stage.

Kent and McDiarmid also took the Almeida into the West End, with a year-long season at the Albery Theatre, attracting Diana Rigg to star in Racine’s Britannicus and Phèdre (1998) and Cate Blanchett in David Hare’s Plenty (1999); and collaborated with Fiennes at the Hackney Empire on Hamlet (1994) and amid the ruined shell of Gainsborough Film Studios on Richard II and Coriolanus (2000). There were world premieres of plays by, among others, David Hare (The Judas Kiss, 1998) and Harold Pinter (Celebration, 2000), and a number of Broadway transfers; Almeida Opera was established in 1992 for the production of new operas.

In 2001 the Grade II listed Almeida closed for a £7.6 million refurbishment. The Almeida Theatre Company found a characteristically unorthodox home-from-home in a converted coach station in London’s Kings Cross, where it staged Lulu by Frank Wedekind and the world premiere of Neil LaBute’s The Shape of Things. In the same year Kent and McDiarmid unexpectedly announced their resignation as directors of the theatre. They were succeeded by Michael Attenborough. The Almeida reopened in May 2003 with a production of Ibsen’s The Lady from the Sea, directed by Trevor Nunn. The auditorium now seats 321.