Exclusive: New JB Priestley play to be staged at the Old Red Lion

A new adaptation of JB Priestley's novel Benighted will be performed at the Old Red Lion theatre in London.

Benighted was written by Priestley in 1927 and was adapted into a film called The Old Dark House. It was the writer's second novel and has been adapted by Duncan Gates, a graduate of the Royal Court Writers Programme. Stephen Whitson will direct the show, which opens in December.

Set in Wales on one stormy night, the novel follows a couple whose car breaks down and who have to take shelter in a dark house with its strange occupants, the Femm Family.

Priestley's stage work includes An Inspector Calls, Time and the Conways and When We Were Married.

The writer's son Tom Priestley commented: "Benighted was totally unlike [my father's] first novel Adam in Moonshine, and indeed unlike anything he wrote later. It will be fascinating to see how it now translates for the stage, a new and very different medium."

Benighted runs at the Old Red Lion from 8 December to 1 January 2017, with previews from 6 December.