Arts in London 2019: The faces to watch in theatre, comedy, dance and art

1/10

On the look out for some arts inspiration for the new year?

These are the people to look out for in the most exciting theatre, comedy, dance and art projects of 2019.

Theatre

Fisayo Akinade, actor

Johan Persson

It takes an actor of real and rare talent to stand out in heavyweight ensembles featuring some of the greatest names in the profession, and that’s a feat Fisayo Akinade, 31, managed not once but twice last year. He was lively fop Witwoud in Restoration comedy The Way of the World at the Donmar Warehouse, and in the National’s current production of Antony and Cleopatra he makes a poignant and loyal Eros to Ralph Fiennes’s great Roman soldier. Next month, Akinade opens in experimental American drama Shipwreck, directed by Rupert Goold, at the Almeida.

Rebecca Frecknall, director

Sometimes a director can make their name with a single production, and that is what happened in 2018 to Rebecca Frecknall, whose striking vision, featuring a ring of nine pianos, of the sultry Tennessee Williams drama Summer and Smoke served notice of a bold new talent. Frecknall, 32, is the latest protégée of Almeida artistic director Rupert Goold, whose talent-spotting capabilities are unrivalled; he’s the man who nurtured Ben Power and Robert Icke. In April, Frecknall, a newly appointed associate director at the Almeida, reunites with Summer and Smoke star Patsy Ferran for Chekhov’s masterpiece Three Sisters.

Lynette Linton, director

Helen Maybanks

What a time this promises to be for 28-year-old Lynette Linton, who this month takes over from Madani Younis as artistic director of the going-places Bush Theatre. This will crown 12 months of hurtling achievement for this energetic writer/director, who at the beginning of 2018 was resident assistant director at the Donmar Warehouse. Linton is currently juggling projects aplenty: her superlative five-star production of Sweat is now playing at the Donmar, and in February her co-production of Richard II opens at the Sam Wanamaker Playhouse at Shakespeare’s Globe, marking the first-ever company of women of colour in a Shakespeare production on a major UK stage.

Faith Omole, actress

It’s quite a thing to make a sparkling West End debut opposite masterful father-and-son duo Edward and Freddie Fox, but that’s what Faith Omole achieved in Jonathan Church’s production of An Ideal Husband. Omole’s Mable Chiltern proved a more than equal match for Fox Junior and her performance confirmed the potential she has already shown across a range of other theatre roles, including Viola in Twelfth Night at Manchester’s Royal Exchange Theatre. In March, the 26-year-old will star in Richard Hawley’s new musical Standing at the Sky’s Edge at Sheffield Crucible.

Comedy

Desiree Burch, comedian

When you are a comedian it helps if you have a little bit of hinterland to draw on. Desiree Burch has lots. For a while the Los Angeles-born storyteller, who comes from a born-again Christian background, worked as a dominatrix. Onstage this London-based powerhouse storyteller is frank and funny about her previous career as well as other topics including race and body image. She has recently been a breath of fresh air on BBC Two’s The Mash Report and Frankie Boyle’s New World Order. Articulate, opinionated and uncensored, it is only a matter of time before Burch gets her own show. It will definitely air after the watershed.

Kiri Pritchard-McLean, comedian

Kiri Pritchard-McLean is known in stand-up circles for having a dark, macabre sensibility thanks to her work with twisted sketch group Gein’s Family Gift Shop. She also has an acclaimed podcast, All Killa No Filla, with Rachel Fairburn, in which she talks about serial killers. But the formidable Welsh comic is moving inexorably from cult towards the mainstream. She made a splash on Have I Got News For You last autumn and has recently been announced as the new host of Radio 4 Extra’s topical show Newsjack, where Romesh Ranganathan and Nish Kumar cut their broadcasting teeth.

Dance

Benoit Swan Pouffer, dancer and director

Pierre Tappon

Meet the man with the best name in dance. The Paris-born choreographer has just been picked as Rambert’s new artistic director — quite a coup. A former principal dancer with Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater in New York, he spent 10 years as head of the city’s Cedar Lake Contemporary Ballet, cultivating early collaborations with choreographers such as Crystal Pite and Hofesh Shechter. As well as overseeing the main Rambert company, the 43-year-old will also be in charge of its new junior troupe Rambert2. New works for next year include a piece by Marion Motin, who’s heavily influenced by hip hop.

Cathy Marston, choreographer

At a time when most choreographers seem to be gravitating towards the abstract, Cathy Marston relishes a big, bold narrative in the English tradition of Ashton and MacMillan. The 44-year-old has already taken on everything from Ibsen’s Ghosts and Wuthering Heights; this year she’ll tackle the life of Queen Victoria. In June, ABT, one of the world’s great ballet companies, will take her Jane Eyre into its repertoire, while The Suit, created for Ballet Black, will be performed in the Royal Opera House’s Linbury Theatre on June 13-15. And did we mention she’s up for a best classical choreography award at the National Dance Awards, too?

Art

Mandy El-Sayegh, artist

Born in 1985 in Selangor, Malaysia, and now a Londoner, Mandy El-Sayegh’s work is rich and intriguing in both form and content, prompting a much deserved solo show at the Chisenhale Gallery in April. She moves fluidly from drawing and painting to writing and using found objects and images. The body is a constant presence in her figurative drawings and in the sculptural textures of other elements, but equally abundant is the written word, whether it is El-Sayegh’s handwriting or printed materials such as newspapers. El-Sayegh’s work is a distinctly personal navigation through a complex world.

Anne Imhof, artist

At every Venice Biennale, one artist gets the art world all abuzz, and at the most recent, in 2017, it was Anne Imhof. The German, born in 1978, won the Biennale’s prestigious Golden Lion with Faust, her work involving glass floors, under which performers lurked, making choreographed movements. Now, Tate Modern has offered the entirety of its subterranean space, The Tanks, for a new project by Imhof for the BMW Tate Live series, with an open installation during the day and performances on six evenings. The installation will feature music, painting and sculpture, and will, like her Venice opus, explore “isolation, technology, proximity and identity”.

Rachel Rossin, artist

Rachel Rossin’s virtual reality (VR) experiments have already had an airing in the Zabludowicz Collection’s 360 VR programme in 2018. But her Zabludowicz show in March is a much bigger deal. Her first solo show in the UK will be built around The Sky is a Gap, a VR work that premiered at the Sundance Festival in 2017. The work takes its cue from the explosive closing scenes of Michelangelo Antonioni’s cult classic Zabriskie Point, and the viewer must navigate their way in time and space, in a trippy landscape featuring a burning Brutalist building and falling objects, caught in the perpetual aftermath of an unknown blast.

Create a FREE account to continue reading

eros

Registration is a free and easy way to support our journalism.

Join our community where you can: comment on stories; sign up to newsletters; enter competitions and access content on our app.

Your email address

Must be at least 6 characters, include an upper and lower case character and a number

You must be at least 18 years old to create an account

* Required fields

Already have an account? SIGN IN

By clicking Create Account you confirm that your data has been entered correctly and you have read and agree to our Terms of use , Cookie policy and Privacy policy .

This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.

Thank you for registering

Please refresh the page or navigate to another page on the site to be automatically logged in