Rebecca Frecknall is one of the great Brit directors of the last decade, having risen to fame via her empathy-heavy takes on the classics for the Almeida Theatre, directing stars like Paul Mescal and Michael Shannon in mostly American work. She scored West End transfers with her productions of Tennessee Williams’ Summer and Smoke and A Streetcar Named Desire, and her smash version of Cabaret has been in the West End for almost five years. She’s off to the Old Vic now, to work with her Almeida boss Rupert Goold. First, though, one last show at the Islington powerhouse: a revival for uncompromising Brit playwright Sarah Kane’s horrifying 1998 classic Cleansed, an extraordinary and unsettling play about a group of people whose love is tested by torture in the mysterious institute in which they’re interred.
One does not simply stage Sarah Kane’s Cleansed – it’s about as extreme as theatre gets. How do you describe what it is to people?
‘I think for me it's an exploration of human love and connection, and can that survive in hell? A lot of people have been like: that feels so different for you doing Sarah Kane. But for me it feels like this play is like the purest distillation of the themes I’ve looked at in all the pieces I’ve done because really it's about love and brutality and how those two things exist together.’
When did you first come across it?
‘I came across Sarah Kane‘s work when I was at university, and I didn’t get it at all. We studied Blasted as part of a module in my first year and I really remember hating it and not understanding it. And then when I got to the end of my degree, I don’t know why, but I really remember clearly going into the university library in Goldsmiths, getting the complete works and I read them like a novel. My understanding of theatre was so expanded and changed during my degree and I've loved it ever since then.’
You’ve actually left the Almeida so how did this ‘one last show’ come about?
‘I’d gone and then it sort of became apparent that actually there would have to be another season [because Goold’s replacement Dominic Cooke couldn’t start until later]. And so Rupert called me, I was in New York, and he said: I don’t know if you're free but would you do a final one in the final season? And I was sort of like: oh I don’t know if I want to, I’ve sort of psychologically gone. And then he said: you could do Cleansed if you want. So I was like: well now I’m gonna have to, aren’t I?’
A lot of your work has revolved around sympathetic takes on problematic characters – can you do that here? Can you find a human side to Tinker, a sadistic torturer who does unspeakably horrific things to the inmates?
‘You can have empathy for anyone, can’t you? Depending on the situation and how they’re framed. And I think it’s really interesting with Tinker because the more we work on the play, the more I feel like it's not clear cut. He’s not playing a game of “how much can I torture these people”, there’s a logic behind what he's doing, even if we never actually know what it is. He clearly doesn't always want to do the things he’s doing, but he's doing them anyway.’
For me it's an exploration of human love and connection, and can that survive in hell?
Your production of Cabaret – which has been running in the West End since 2021 – has got to be the most successful British production ever, hasn’t it?
‘Yes. I really remember when we were first making it, feeling like: this is not even going to open because of Covid. Now we’re the longest running production [of Cabaret] ever in the West End.’
It’s notable for some pretty headspinning celebrity casts – are you still involved with the show and its casting?
‘Yes, very much, you know, it has to go on. You go from making a piece of work to sort of running a company in a way. You have to step away from it a bit and bring the right people in who are actually going to run it day to day. But I still try to rehearse with every cast; I will watch every new cast in a preview or a dress rehearsal and every cast’s final show; I have weekly check-ins with my associate on it and like I try to be around enough that it feels like I’m still present.’
Do you have a hit list of celebrities to cast? Some of the pairings of leads like Rebecca Lucy Taylor and Jake Shears feel quite engineered to direct the show towards a specific audience.
‘There have been really interesting conversations about how you mix music artists and theatre artists together or apart, but there’s so much jigsawing together people’s schedules and who wants to do it and when they can do it that more often than not, the universe dictates who’s doing it and when.’
Cabaret had fairly harsh reviews in New York and didn’t last nearly as long – how do you look back on that?
‘I learnt so much doing it on Broadway and I thought the show in New York was brilliant. And I don’t always think that about my work. But I think sometimes we think because we share a language that London and New York share a theatre culture, and they don’t. Sometimes productions come over from New York and they don’t really work. There’s so much about time and a place that means the same piece of work can be a huge success somewhere and a huge failure somewhere else and it’s actually not anything to do with the quality of the work.’
You’re about to move to the Old Vic with Rupert Goold – can you say anything about what you’ll be doing? Do you know what your first show will be?
‘I actually don’t! I sort of know what it's between, but we’re still in the process of putting that season together. It’s a funny thing at the moment, I had my final day at the Almeida on March 30, and I couldn’t stop crying. And then I went to Amsterdam to do a show, came back and did my first day at the Old Vic and I felt like I was going to secondary school where I didn’t know anyone. And now I’m back at the Almeida. So I’ll have to have my first day at the Old Vic again in August.’
You directed Paul Mescal in A Streetcar Named Desire and you’re directing him again next year in Death of a Salesman at the National Theatre: can you tell us more?
‘When I met Paul he had two bucket-list characters, and they were Stanley in Streetcar and Biff in Salesman. And I remember it was like week two of Streetcar rehearsals, and he sort of came up to me and went, Do you know Salesman? And I said: well yes, but I haven’t read it for a long time. He’s like: read it, can you read it, because that's what I wanna do next. And he kept over the years going, Have you read Salesman, do you want to do Salesman? And it sort of got to a point where I was like: look Paul, if you want to do Salesman, I will do it. And then he called me one day and said, I think, I think we might be on.’
Cleansed is at the Almeida Theatre, Jul 21-Aug 29.
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