Almeida Summer Festival 2008
Preview by Lizzie Guilfoyle
THIS year, the Almeida Theatre’s Summer Festival will include the London premiere of An Ocean of Rain, a specially commissioned opera by Yannis Kyriakides (music) and Daniel Danis (text); the European premiere of Adam Rapp’s Nocturne; and British African Theatre Company Tiata Fahodzi’s first week long residency at the Almeida.
It will also host a return visit from Barb Jungr; Theatre of Possibilities, the Almeida’s fourth collaboration with Tate Modern; and a concert by Ensemble MAE.
An Ocean of Rain (London premiere) – July 10 and July 11 at 7:30pm, and July 13 at 7pm.
Three cosmopolitan women make their annual escape to Haiti to help in an orphanage. Their jaded bodies and souls begin to be re-awakened by the beaches and the challenges of helping the orphans. A girl on the run from the murder of a sex tourist returns to the orphanage to shatter the comfort of the women’s’ lives and the sea unexpectedly reveals its hidden strength.
Cathie Boyd, founder of Theatre Cryptic, will direct a cast that includes Anna Dennis, Camille Hesketh, Katalin Károlyi and Hyacinth Nicholls. Boyd’s opera credits include Gounod’s Faust, Britten’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream and, for the Almeida, Sciarrino’s Infinito Nero and Holt’s Who Put Bella in the Wych Elm?
An Aldeburgh Almeida Opera, Theatre Cryptic and Ensemble MAE co-production, Ocean of Rain is designed by John Otto, with lighting by Zerlina Hughes and will be conducted by Bas Wiegers. Translation is by Linda Gaboriau.
Tickets: £27.50, £22, £15, £6 plus concessions.
New Narratives – Ensemble MAE in Concert – July 12 at 7:30pm.
In a concert complementing An Ocean of Rain, Ensemble MAE will perform Yannis Kyriakides’ Dream of the Blind as well as works by Eric Satie and Cor Fulher, Felix Profos, Felipe Waller and Martha Colburn, Robert Ashley and Claudio Baroni and Fabian Macaccio.
Tickets: £15, £10 and £6.
Nocturne (European premiere) – July 16, 17, 18, 19, 23, 24, 25 and 26 at 7:30pm and July 19 and 26 at 3pm.
Adam Rapp’s one man play explores the accidental killing of a little girl by her teenage brother. Across the decade and a half that follows the teenager becomes a man, and tries to cope with the ramifications of his guilt and the estrangement of his surviving family, while making a desperate search for redemption.
Award-winning Rapp is a novelist, playwright, screenwriter and filmmaker. His work includes Ghosts in the Cottonwoods and Gompers (both produced at the Arcola Theatre), Blackbird (Bush Theatre) and Finer Noble Gases (Edinburgh Fringe Festival); plus Animals and Plants, Stone Cold Dead Serious, Faster, Trueblinker, Dreams of the Salthouse and Red Light Winter (all produced in the US).
Nocturne will be directed by Matt Wilde (Out of the Fog at the Almeida) in collaboration with composer Phillip Neil Martin who is currently Music Creator in Residence at the Royal College of Fashion. Casting will be announced shortly.
Following its run in Islington, Nocturne will be presented at the Traverse Theatre as part of the Edinburgh Festival Fringe.
Tickets: £20, £15 and £6.
Theatre of Possibilities – July 20 at 7pm (plus pre-performance talk at 6pm by Nicholas Cullinan, Assistant Curator of the Tate Exhibition), and July 21 at 7.30pm.
Theatre of Possibilities uses Tate Modern’s exhibition of Cy Twombly to illuminate key areas in Twombly’s creative life. It will feature Pierre Henri’s Voile d’Orphee, as well as the UK premiere of John Cage’s late ensemble work Fourteen, and Sally Burgess (who performed Pierrot Lunaire for Schoenberg/Kandinsky as part of Almeida Opera 2006 and Lorca and Music for Almeida Opera 2007) will sing Claudio Monteverdi’s Il Combattimento di Tancredi e Clorinda.
Tickets: £18, £10 and £6.
Coinciding with Cy Twombly’s 80th year, the Tate Exhibition (June 19 to September 14, 2008) will be the first major retrospective in the UK for twenty years of the artist’s work. It will present a unique opportunity to examine his paintings, drawings and sculpture across his long and distinguished career.
No Regrets – The Remarkable Barb Jungr – July 22 at 8pm.
Following last year’s sell-out concert which featured a collection of Bob Dylan songs, Barb Jungr and her musicians return to the Almeida with her much requested chansons repertoire including the specially commissioned translations that have brought Jungr two New York Awards and established her career in the UK.
The concert will also include material by Jacques Brel and Leo Ferre as well as some of the British and American chansons writers including Richard Thompson, Elvis Costello and Jungr’s great love Bob Dylan.
Jungr received the 2008 New York Nightlife Award for ‘Outstanding Cabaret Singer’ and the 2003 New York Backstage Award for ‘Best International Artist’. She has released six albums for Linn Records Label, including this year’s Just Like A Woman – Hymn To Nina, featuring the repertoire of Nina Simone.
Tickets: £20, £15 and £10.
Tiata Delights 08, presented by British African Theatre Company Tiata Fahodzi in their first week long residency at the Almeida – July 28, 29, 30, 31 and August 1 at 7.30pm, and August 2 at 6pm. The week will culminate in a concert of eclectic British African music on August 2 at 9pm.
Now in its fourth year, Tiata Fahodzi’s annual new writing initiative – Tiata Delights – will present work by six emerging and established playwrights all resident in the UK. Over the course of a week, six new plays will receive staged readings by three directors overseen by Artistic Director Femi Elufowoju Jr. This year’s season will open with a new play written by 2008 Laurence Olivier award-winner Bola Agbaje.
The week-long event concludes on Saturday with a concert bringing together a selection of UK’s finest African musicians. The confirmed line up includes Jamiroquai’s Sola Akingbola, Contemporary-Gospel sensation GK Real, Sierra-Leonean Harmonica player Leon Maddy, James Lascelles and traditional African classicist Tunde Jegede.
For more information call the box office on 020 7359 4404 (24 hour) or visit the websites (see right-hand panel).