Albion Programme
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“THIS IS OUR LITTLE PIECE OF THE WORLD, AND ALBION WE’RE ALLOWED TO DO WITH IT, EXACTLY AS WE LIKE. YES?” Registered Charity Number 282167 4 5 Registered Charity Number 282167 ALBION by Mike Bartlett Directed by Rupert Goold 1 February – 29 February 2020 CAST CREATIVE TEAM PRODUCTION TEAM Production Electrician Edward Writer Production Manager Philip Burke Nigel Betts Mike Bartlett Tom Horton Production Sound Krystyna Direction Production Assistant Engineer Edyta Budnik Rupert Goold Lauren Young Michael Woods Weatherbury/James/ Design Company Stage Manager Production Carpenters Stanley Miriam Buether Linsey Hall Gruff Carro Stuart Relph Wil Coban Light Deputy Stage Manager Anna Neil Austin Lorna Seymour Show Crew Angel Coulby James Barbour Sound Assistant Stage Managers Tom Carro-Lemay Zara Gregory Clarke Meg Charlton Chris Parker Daisy Edgar-Jones Catriona McHugh Casting Tech Week Runner Gabriel Amy Ball Head of Costume Olivia Page Dónal Finn Claire Wardroper Movement Director Stage Management Matthew Rebecca Frecknall Wardrobe Deputy Student Placement Geoffrey Freshwater Associate Director Bec Goldstone Daiva Aleksiunaite Audrey Walters Tom Brennan Wardrobe Assistant Set built by Victoria Hamilton Associate Lighting Finlay Forbes Gower Miraculous Engineering Cheryl Designer Hair and Makeup Set painted by Margot Leicester Jamie Platt Suzanne Scotcher Kerry Jarrett Paul Walters Costume Supervisor Chief Technician Horticultural Consultant Nicholas Rowe Claire Wardroper Jason Wescombe Janice McGuire Katherine Sanchez Assistant Designer Lighting Technician Production and Rehearsal Helen Schlesinger Joana Dias Robin Fisher Photos by Voice Coach Sound Technician Marc Brenner Alison Bomber George Lumkin Theatre Technician Fraser Craig Cover Victoria Hamilton photographed by Marc Brenner 1 ALBION REPOTTED Our ideas of who we are by Rupert Goold, Artistic Director as a country and a people are much less simply divided between those who wanted their borders secured and those who liked them porous. Plays, like plants, grow over time. the national recalibration, our ideas of Their meanings shift, flowering and who we are as a country and a people withering in unexpected ways, so are much less simply divided between that lines, scenes and characters that those who wanted their borders seemed unimportant take on new secured and those who liked them significance while others fade or porous. Class, property, the wealth evolve. We see it all the time with very gap, gender, sexuality, nostalgia, old plays when we revive them, and hope, and, above all, the increasing I hope the Almeida has continually generational fracture between young tried to interrogate this phenomenon and old have made those exciting in our work on Shakespeare and times more complicated than we Ibsen and Greek tragedy, but when it could have imagined back then. happens on plays that are still saplings I believe theatre’s greatest function in rather than sturdy oaks, it is in some society is to try and bring ALL parts ways even more fascinating. of society together to share stories A decade ago I worked on a play called about ourselves, to listen and to Enron by Lucy Prebble that opened in understand. To do that we need plays the Weimar-like giddy uncertainty of of humanism and compassion, plays the 2008 financial crash but by the time that are able to sit and hold the hand we reached the end of that production’s of the other, in whatever form that long life the bite of austerity had might take, and come to know transformed riotous vaudeville it better. into something harder and more So this is the first revival of an monumental so that the atmosphere Almeida production in my time as in the audience was entirely different Artistic Director and I hope, as well from how it had begun. as giving all those who missed it I always sensed Albion was a play previously a chance to see some of that might have a similarly complex the finest acting we’ve had on this journey. When we opened in 2017, stage, you will hear something new among the mostly positive notices we and resonant forged from the form of had was one from a leave-supporting what was there before. I believe it is a critic who despaired that we were genuine play for today and I couldn’t presenting (in his mind) a play for be prouder of our role in bringing it the moment that failed to recognise to the stage here at the Almeida and I “the interesting and often thrilling hope one day around the country too. times we live in” in the aftermath of Thrilling times? Our job at the the referendum. Now, over two years theatre is to ask the question not later, as we depart the EU and begin posit the answer. Set of Albion at the Almeida in 2017. Photo by Marc Brenner. 2 3 PRESERVATION Country houses FOR THE PEOPLE seemed out of time, by Adam Page with the squires and landlords, and the social In the mid-nineteenth century, writer and art order they represented, historian John Ruskin suggested to the Society of Antiquaries that a new Association be created lost with them. to produce a catalogue of “buildings of interest” endangered by demolition, development or restoration. In the decades after Ruskin’s intervention, a number of organisations were established, including the National Trust in 1895. Nineteenth century preservationism was informed by concerns about a nation, culture and landscape endangered by a modernity of industrialisation and urbanisation, which was quickly and dramatically reshaping natural and built environments. Key figures in these early years included Ruskin and William Morris, who both criticised industrialisation and its effects on people and places, and stressed the beauty of nature. But while Morris in particular was closely associated with an early socialist politics in Britain, around the turn of the century the preservationist call began to be heard from the right as well as the left. For conservatives in the early twentieth century who had previously opposed intrusions into the rights of private property holders, preservationism increasingly began to be understood as a response to a rapidly changing country and society. The preservation of old landscapes and architectures here signified a vision of a stable social order and a connection to an idea of England fixed at a moment of imperial and economic strength. The invocations of rural scenes from left and right highlight how national and regional landscapes can be incorporated into the visual and even spiritual vocabulary of a variety of political projects. The legibility of images of the countryside, when combined with its openness to rewriting, has made it a symbol of national identity that has proven remarkably resilient. This resilience is exemplified by its frequent depiction as something under threat from disruptive forces, with the implication being that Englishness and England itself is endangered, but enduring. > Moreton Corbet Hall. Image: FreespiritTownsVillages/Alamy 4 5 The preservation of old landscapes and architectures signified a vision of a stable social order and a connection to an idea of England fixed at a moment of imperial and economic strength. In the twentieth century, a of halting the tide of of the future in the mid- 1947 novel, One Fine Day, argued that despair at the this feeling of imminent new kind of war was added historical change, and twentieth century, and in a woman returns to her disintegration of the pre- decline and eclipse, a to the familiar dangers of resisting the forces of the Second World War in house after the war to find war social system and its consistent presence in industry and the growth modernity, but represented particular. it transformed and the replacement with modern modern British history and sprawl of cities. The an attempt to use expert During the war, world it signified reduced democracy, as dramatized and culture, is unwittingly First World War played knowledge to manage government commissioned to ghostly traces. The in the declining country exposed by these images an important part in the and plan a landscape films depicted the Britain staff had left to work in house, was a key driving of refurbished houses elevation of the notion that could be both that would rise from the factories in the town and force for the heritage and immaculate gardens of an English pastoral modern and traditional. ruins, with New Towns would not return, while sensibilities which achieved frozen in time. The sense into an easily recognised These groups sought to and a harmonious balance the landscape was scattered prominence in the 1980s. of an old country under image of peace, something bring ordered progress between town and country, with Nissen Huts and By the end of the 1980s, threat was evoked again defined by its opposition through the promotion tradition and modernity. scarred by thick muddy a growing heritage and recognisable images of to the antipastoral of the of expert knowledge The country house, a tracks left by military industry was exhibiting rural peace were presented battlefields of northern and interventions in the frequent icon of heritage vehicles, as barbed wire and exporting a vision of as a response, but the Europe. In the years after landscape, and made and Englishness, had little and sandbags blocked the Britain often populated focus here was not on how the First World War there preservationism into a place in these images of route back to the past. The by these same country these landscapes could be was a shift in the work of more modern political the future and was already country house seemed out houses, striped lawns and utilised to tackle social preservationists which project. Rural spaces were understood somewhat of time, and the squires and elegant rose bushes, which problems as the “planner- reflects this increasing presented as remedies as a vestige of the past.