Albion

Mike Bartlett’s hit UK drama, Albion, will receive its Australian premiere at Seymour Centre presented by Secret House, New Ghosts Theatre Company and Seymour Centre.

Against advice from family and friends, businesswoman Audrey buys an old house in ruins and dreams of restoring the house’s once magnificent garden to its former glory, as a tribute to the son she recently lost to war. As she clings to the significance of the past, she searches for seeds of hope in the future.

Praised by The New York Times for its richly imagined drama and characters, Albion is at once a sweeping family saga and a powerful parable about patriotism, nostalgia and national identity in Brexit-era Britain. Deliberately drawing parallels with Chekhov’s masterpiece, The Cherry Orchard, Bartlett paints a poignant, shrewdly funny portrait of a nation torn between preserving the past and radically reforming the present, and Albion played to packed houses and critical acclaim upon its debut in 2017, later returning to London’s famed Almeida Theatre for a special encore run in early 2020.

A three-time Olivier Award winner, playwright Mike Bartlett is one of the UK’s most exciting dramatists. His 2009 comedy, Cock, was recently revived on the West End with Bridgerton star Jonathan Bailey leading a sell-out season, and his Chariots of Fire adaptation premiered at London’s Hampstead Theatre in 2012 before transferring to the West End. His 2014 drama, King Charles III, played on the West End and Broadway before transferring to STC, and was later adapted for television by the BBC.