A new Caryl Churchill play is coming to the Almeida Theatre, and it runs a quarter of an hour. Triumph plays for one week only, from Friday 16 to Friday 23 October 2026, with Kate O'Flynn and Matthew Beard in the cast.
Caryl Churchill has written a new short play, and the Almeida Theatre is staging it next month for a single week. Triumph runs from Friday 16 to Friday 23 October 2026. Kate O'Flynn and Matthew Beard lead the cast, and James Macdonald directs.
The running time is approximately fifteen minutes. The Almeida credits the play as written with help from Suetonius's The Twelve Caesars, and sets out the premise in three lines: an emperor is happy, which makes everyone else happy, and the press secretary Iris is falling for a reporter. The theatre describes the result as a grim joke about where we are today.
O'Flynn is billed by the Almeida as an Emmy Award winner, with credits including Widow's Bay and My Lady Jane. Beard is billed as a Tony Award nominee, with credits including The Testament of Ann Lee and The Imitation Game.
Macdonald knows the address. His Almeida productions include Bakkhai, A Delicate Balance, Judgment Day and The Triumph of Love, and the theatre notes that Churchill is among the writers he has worked with most often.
Because the piece is so short, the week carries more performances than a normal Almeida run, several of them at times a theatre rarely uses:
- Friday 16 October, 1.30pm and 4pm
- Sunday 18 October, 2.30pm, 4pm and 5.30pm
- Monday 19 October, 1.30pm (Almeida For Free)
- Tuesday 20 October, 5.30pm
- Thursday 22 October, 5.30pm
- Friday 23 October, 1.30pm and 10.45pm
There is a captioned performance on Friday 16 October at 1.30pm and a relaxed environment performance on Tuesday 20 October at 5.30pm. The production is recommended for ages 14 and over.
The pricing is worth knowing before you book. A limited number of £5 tickets are available to anyone aged 25 or under across every performance, and the Monday 19 October matinee is an Almeida For Free performance for the same age group, with those tickets released on Monday 12 October at 5pm. Discounted rates also run through the week for the under-30s, the over-65s and the unemployed.
Churchill has a second London date this autumn. Cloud 9 opens at the Lyttelton at the National Theatre on Monday 2 November 2026 in a production directed by Dominic Cooke, and is booking until Wednesday 13 January 2027.
The Almeida's current production, Golden Boy, runs until Saturday 31 October 2026. You can read what the critics made of it in our review roundup.
