The Almeida, “one of the most creative and fashionable theatres in London,” reopens this week after a £7.6m makeover. “Now Michael Attenborough takes over with a strong programme pretty much guaranteed to fill the revamped theatre’s 321 seats. And he has to fill them – this is a very small number of seats and the economics of the Almeida have always been of the wing-and-prayer variety.”