A revival of Clifford Odets' Golden Boy runs at the Almeida Theatre from 8 September to 31 October 2026. Every date is sold out.
Clifford Odets wrote Golden Boy for the Group Theatre in 1937, at the point when American plays were still expected to end with a moral. It is about an Italian-American boy who can either play the violin or box, cannot do both because boxing will break his hands, and chooses the money. Odets had written for the Group’s own left politics for years; this is the play where the argument stopped being about a strike and became about what a person does when the honest option pays nothing.
It made Odets’s name and then damaged his reputation, because he went to Hollywood not long after, the same choice the play is about. He was aware of that. The Group Theatre lasted a decade and produced Kazan, Clurman, Strasberg and the method that came out of them, so the acting tradition America exported was formed in the company this play was written for.
The Almeida revives it from Tuesday 8 September to Saturday 31 October 2026 — eight weeks, its longest booking of the season — and every date went before opening night, so returns are the only route in. The Almeida has spent twenty years reviving American plays of the 1930s and 1940s with English casts and finding that the politics travel intact, which is either a compliment to Odets or a comment on the last ninety years.