Albion by Mike Bartlett is a contemporary British drama about grief, nostalgia, and the disintegration of the illusion that the past can be restored. One of the most significant contemporary English playwrights, Bartlett creates in this play both an intimate and a societal portrait of a person — and a world — living among the ruins of their hopes. First staged at the Almeida Theatre in London in 2017, the text quickly established itself as one of the important British plays of our time — a work that, through a family story, captures broader questions of identity, belonging, memory, and the end of a certain notion of “home” and “homeland.”
The story unfolds in the garden of an old estate in Oxfordshire, where Audrey returns with the desire to restore not only a place, but also the very possibility of meaning after the loss she has endured. Gradually, her attempt to organize the space around her becomes a painful attempt to bring order to her own inner world. Thus, the garden proves to be not a refuge, but a means for the realization that time does not return what it has taken, and that any clinging to the past leads only to further alienation. It is precisely within this territory — between personal pain, memory, and nostalgia — that Bartlett constructs his play as a story of an impossible return.
In Zafir Radjab’s production, this dramatic world comes to life as a deeply emotional experience on the stage, in which memory, loss, and the sense of an irretrievably vanished life form the core of the performance. In the role of Audrey is Koyna Ruseva, who, together with the rest of the distinguished cast, creates a powerful ensemble with a striking stage presence.
Askeer 2026 Theatre Award nomination for Supporting Actress (Stanka Kalcheva)
Askeer 2026 Theatre Award nomination for Supporting Actor (Bozhidar Yordanov and Kiril Nedkov)
Askeer 2026 Theatre Award nomination for Set Design (Elis Veli)
Askeer 2026 Theatre Award nomination for Directing (Zafir Radjab)
Askeer 2026 Theatre Award nomination for Best Production
With English subtitles.
