By Neil Durham

WORTH A LOOK?: ***1/2

WHEN?: Friday 23 October 2026 RUNTIME: 20 minutes (no interval)

Can a play ever be too short?

• Read on for reasons including how Triumph, despite its brevity, doesn’t disappoint

You join us in the front row of 1 of our favourite 233-seat London venues for the last of 12 performances of the new play by Caryl Churchill (What If If Only, Royal Court) starring Kate O’Flynn (The End Of History, Royal Court) who won this year’s Best Supporting Actress Emmy for Widow’s Bay.

O’Flynn is also shortlisted for the 2026 Best TV/Film Actress monsta and you can vote for her to win here and in Triumph plays a White House press secretary in a platinum blond wig in a style not too dissimilar from the current administration.

But O’Flynn’s Iris calls her boss the emperor as she regales the unseen press with his achievements including bringing home pearls from Britain and gold from Gaul.

This Roman comparison is reinforced by her journalist lover Marcus (Matthew Beard, film Elsinore) who tells her in bed about less palatable stories of the Emperor – he keeps prisoners trapped in cages where they can’t lie down and saws them in half – which she reveals live on TV.

Marcus is never seen again and Iris begs for a similar fate but the decision of the emperor imparted by Sargon Yelda’s (Private Lives, Donmar Warehouse) Rufus is the twist in this brief tale.

The Roman connection and inspiration by Suetonius’s The Twelve Caesars is acknowledged in the show notes for these 12 performances directed by James Macdonald (Juniper Blood, Donmar) on the venue’s website.

Author Caryl Churchill is an English playwright celebrated for her political themes, feminist focus, and experimental, non-naturalistic staging techniques.

We’re here for O’Flynn whose work is always interesting and chosen with intelligence – and Triumph, despite its brevity, doesn’t disappoint.

The tickets were only £10 each and it’s incredible to see work so focused that reflects the daily nightmare in which we’re currently living seen through a different yet perhaps even more illuminating lens.

Do plays have to be 60, 75, 90 or even 150 minutes long with an interval because that’s what they most often are? Not at all – and we wouldn’t be surprised if Triumph didn’t return again in some form and soon.

• Main pictures by Marc Brenner via Facebook courtesy Almeida Theatre Tickets
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