The Almeida theatre has a coup in Dominic Cooke: this gifted director is also a proven talent spotter | Michael Billington

Moving easily between daring new work from the likes of Jez Butterworth to lucid fresh takes on the canon and heartful musicals, Cooke is an optimal new leader• Dominic Cooke appointed as the Almeida theatre’s artistic directorDominic Cooke is an inspired choice to succeed Rupert Goold at the Almeida. He is a proven hand at directing new plays, classics and musicals. He is a very good producer who appears to rejoice in the success of his colleagues. And, at a time when the vogue is for “reimagined” versions of old plays, he is that rare figure: one who respects an author’s intentions while remaining open to new ideas. At 59 he also has an extensive list of credits without being, in words once fatuously applied to the BBC’s former head of Radio 3, John Drummond, “tainted by experience”.As artistic director of London’s Royal Court from 2006 to 2013, Cooke showed exceptional judgment. I well remember an opening press conference where he said one of his aims was to stage plays about the aspirational middle classes. He was as good as his word with productions of Bruce Norris’s The Pain and the Itch and Clybourne Park which satirised, respectively, phoney white liberalism and bourgeois property fetishism. Continue reading...

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