Rebecca Frecknall
Client
Rebecca is a multi-Olivier Award-winning director, who has directed in the UK and internationally. She is associate director at the Almeida Theatre.
Rebecca first reached critical acclaim with her production of Tennessee Williams’ Summer and Smoke, which opened at the Almeida Theatre in 2018 before transferring to the West End. The production received five Olivier nominations, and won the Olivier for Best Revival of a Play.
Rebecca’s production of Cabaret at the Kit Kat Club opened in 2021, starring Eddie Redmayne and Jessie Buckley. Cabaret is the most successful revival in Olivier history with eleven nominations and seven wins – including Best Musical Revival, Best Director, and sweeping the board in all four acting categories. Cabaret transferred to Broadway in Spring 2024 with a clutch of nine Tony nominations, including Best Revival of a Musical.
As Associate Director at the Almeida Theatre, Rebecca has directed critically acclaimed productions of The Duchess of Malfi, Three Sisters, Romeo and Juliet and the record-breaking, award-winning A Streetcar Named Desire, starring Paul Mescal and Patsy Ferran. The West End transfer of Streetcar became the fastest selling show in ATG history and garnered six Olivier nominations, winning the Cunard award for Best Revival. The production was revived for a limited West End run in February 2025, before transferring to the Brooklyn Academy of Music for its New York premiere.
The third in her trilogy of Williams’ plays, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, starring Kingsley Ben-Adir and Daisy Edgar-Jones, opened at the Almeida in December 2024. A Moon for the Misbegotten, starring Ruth Wilson and Michael Shannon, has been programmed for summer 2025.
Rebecca made her National Theatre debut in 2023 with Alice Birch’s new version of The House of Bernarda Alba, starring Harriet Walter, in the Lyttleton. Rebecca made her US debut with the world premiere of Martyna Majok’s Sanctuary City at New York Theatre Workshop in 2022, for which she won the Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Director and was a finalist for the Joe A. Callaway Award for Distinguished Direction.
Rebecca was listed as 13th in The Stage's 100 most influential figures working in theatre in 2023. She will join Rupert Goold as Associate Director at the Old Vic in 2026 and is the incoming Ibsen Artist in Residence at the Internationaal Theater Amsterdam (ITA); following her 2024 production there of JULIE, a version of Strindberg’s Miss Julie, both adapted and directed by her.
Frecknall is ‘the complete dazzling directorial package: a fine critical mind wedded to a confident sense of fun…she’s succeeded in making John Kander and Fred Ebb’s 56-year-old fun machine feel like a brand new musical event’ [John Lahr in Airmail on Cabaret]
Frecknall ‘once again proves she is a theatrical force to be reckoned with’ [David Benedict on A Streetcar Named Desire in Variety]
Frecknall is ‘fast becoming the director with a consummate gift for turning old into new’ [Arifa Akbar on Romeo and Juliet in The Guardian]
Frecknall ‘treats the often overly familiar play as if it were entirely fresh, and the result is astonishing’ [Matt Wolf on Romeo and Juliet in The New York Times]
'Frecknall is a director with thrilling insights into the works we think we know...the work of one of the most exciting directors around"’ [The Independent on A Streetcar Named Desire]
Praise for A Moon for the Misbegotten:
★★★★★ ‘The finest acting you'll see all year...utterly spellbinding...’ The Telegraph
★★★★ 'Frecknall turns the tilth on a half-buried play, and digs up something extraordinary...achingly gorgeous' Time Out
★★★★ 'Utterly luminous' Independent
★★★★ 'Powerful revival' The Stage
★★★★ 'The best acting a British stage has seen in a long time' The i
Praise for Cat on a Hot Tin Roof:
★★★★★ ‘What makes Frecknall’s Tennessee Williams productions so powerful is that she always manages to find goodness in his cracked characters’ Time Out
★★★★ ‘Emotionally distilled but stylistically abstract…above all, Frecknall is a tremendous director of actors’ The Standard
Praise for A Streetcar Named Desire:
★★★★★ 'A Streetcar Named Desire for a new generation...unmistakably feminist and feminine' Broadway World
★★★★★ ‘Outstanding...manages to clear away the clag of the story while introducing a new sense of mystery. Not an ounce of “great theatre” stiffness here: this is raw, poetic, painful and plausible. Funny, too’ The Times
★★★★ 'This wrenchingly sad, stark staging of Tennessee Williams’ play is the stuff theatrical myths are made of, and the first great London show of 2023’ Evening Standard
★★★★ ‘One of the year's hottest, most hyped shows"’ Guardian
★★★★ 'Heart stopping' The Telegraph
★★★★ 'Ferociously gripping, aesthetically astute, complex and compassionate' The Stage
Praise for Cabaret:
A 'nerve shredding revival' The New York Times
★★★★★ "This is it. This is the one... 2021's kill-for-a-ticket theatrical triumph" - Telegraph
★★★★★ "A stunning, breathlessly exciting theatrical happening... Frecknall proves herself one of our most exciting directors, and she draws superb performances from all involved" - Evening Standard
★★★★★ "... Astonishing... [Buckley's rendition of the title song is] perhaps the best musical-theatre performance I have ever seen live" - Independent
★★★★★ "This is musical theatre at its absolute finest. A total knockout" - Broadway World
★★★★★ "An outstanding piece of theatre... Sensational" - Financial Times
Praise for Romeo and Juliet
★★★★★ 'For seldom was a staging better yet than this...a masterclass in how to tell Shakespeare...unmissable' The Telegraph
★★★★★ 'Five stars simply isn't enough for the urgent vibrant glory of this...all-conquering director Rebecca Frecknall...continues her incredible winning streak of hits' The I
★★★★ 'An originality and intensity that sweeps all before it' Whats On Stage
★★★★ 'The director with a consummate gift for turning old into new' The Guardian
★★★★'Makes us see this familiar story with fresh eyes' Evening Standard
★★★★'Urgent and freshly shocking...a visceral reimagining' The Stage
Praise for Sanctuary City:
"Frecknall's staging is just as breakneck, as if it had shed its clothing to run faster through the woods." The New York Times
"...brought to life in Rebecca Frecknall's thrillingly minimal production" The New York Times
"...British Theater wunderkind Rebecca Frecknall, whose crystalline work is present in every single detail, yet simultaneously invisible." Theatermania
"Frecknall's balletic directing" Broadway World
Praise for Three Sisters:
"Frecknall doesn't so much direct Chekhov's play as conduct it. The result sits in that sweet spot: a Chekhov for our times." Variety
"Rebecca Frecknall’s revelatory production..." The New York Times
"In its drifting strangeness, it reminds us why Chekhov is - ironically - so timeless and why he might speak afresh to today's millenials." ★★★★ The Financial Times
"A slow-burning yet engrossing study of a young family's collapsing dreams." ★★★★ What's on Stage
Praise for Summer and Smoke:
★★★★★ Rebecca Frecknall's shiveringly beautiful production
The Sunday Times
★★★★★ Rebecca Frecknall's whole production seems to tremble like a sustained, held high note: fragile, uncertain, almost unbearably tense
The Independent
★★★★★ It's superb stuff: sensual, shimmering and sad
The Financial Times
★★★★★ There is magic in the sultry magnolia-scented air at the Almeida with this one
The Times
★★★★★ So captivating in its every second
The Stage
★★★★ Restores Williams's wrongly neglected play to a central place in the canon
The Guardian