Albion is a slower burn than some of Bartlett's other plays. It is about Englishness and gardens and nostalgia and in that sense a desire, which may or may not be possible, to relive the past. The metaphors will be debated as the themes are many and complex.
At Rupert Goold's Almeida, an exciting alternative to the National Theatre, along with director Sacha Wares, Bartlett envisages where the public's taste for reality will take us.
Mike Bartlett may be our best British playwright. With each play he writes he demonstrates a variety of talent and perception, inventing new and diverse subjects. His latest play surprised some of the critical fraternity, who hadn't done their homework, when they realised his modern history play, like Shakespeare's histories was in verse. Except that it isn't accurate to call King Charles III a history play as it is about events that haven't yet taken place.