Rebecca Frecknall

During her time as a Regional Theatre Young Director at Northern Stage, Rebecca formed a relationship with playwright Lee Mattinson. Her bursary supported the development of a new play that they are both passionate about – a bold re-imagining of Lorca’s The House of Bernarda Alba.

Michael Grandage in Conversation with Waleed Akhtar, Rebecca Frecknall and Isley Lynn

Contributor to MGCfutures podcast futures Remixed Episode 1: Introducing Universal Stories

Since receiving the bursary…

Rebecca is a multi-Olivier Award-winning director, who has directed in the UK and internationally. She is currently associate director at the Almeida Theatre but will leave there in spring 2026 to take up the role of Associate Director at the Old Vic. Rebecca is the current Ibsen Artist in Residence at International Theater Amsterdam (ITA) where she will be attached until the end of 2027.

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, including Best Director and won the Olivier for Best Revival of a Play. Her 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. The production transferred to Broadway in spring 2024 with a clutch of nine Tony nominations, including Best Revival of a Musical. Last year the production broke the record for the longest running West End production of Cabaret.

As Associate Director at the Almeida, 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 (BAM) for its New York premiere. This year Rebecca will remake the production for the ITA Ensemble. 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 for which Rebecca was nominated for The Standard Award for Best Director, and A Moon for the Misbegotten, starring Ruth Wilson and Michael Shannon ran the following summer with both actors picking up best acting nominations for their roles.

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. She will return to the NT in Summer 2026 to direct Paul Mescal in Death of a Salesman. 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.

In 2024 Rebecca directed the world premier of JULIE, at ITA a version of Strindberg’s Miss Julie, both adapted and directed by her. This year she will continue her work with the ensemble there, directing the world premier of The Architect, a new play based on Ibsen’s The Master Builder.