Theatre News

Pennington & Downie Lead Judgement Day at Print Room

2 November 2011

Michael Pennington and Penny Downie will lead the cast of James Dacre’s forthcoming production of Judgement Day, adapted by Mike Poulton from Ibsen’s When We Dead Awaken, at The Print Room later this month.

Speaking to Whatsonstage.com, Pennington described the play – Ibsen’s last – as a “much neglected” but “incredible” work.

“For me it completes a trio, because the only Ibsens I’ve done in my life are his final plays – Borkman, The Master Builder and now this. So my Ibsen career is rather eccentric in that way,” he said.

It marks the first time Pennington has worked with Downie, who recently appeared in Butley in the West End and the RSC’s acclaimed Hamlet in 2008, opposite David Tennant and Patrick Stewart.

Written and first performed in 1899, When We Dead Awaken was last produced in London in 1994. Set within a mythical Nordic landscape, Judgement Day
offers an “explicit and merciless self-portrait of Ibsen as an aging
artist: restless with his art, his homeland and his married life”.

Mike Poulton’s previous adaptations include Schiller’s Luise Miller, which ran at the Donmar Warehouse earlier this year. His version of Schiller’s Don Carlos ran in the West End with Derek Jacobi in 2005 and he has also adapted Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales for the RSC (2006) among other works.

Judgement Day runs at The Print Room from 21 November to 17 December 2011 (previews from 16 November). The six-strong cast will also feature Philip Corriea, Andrew Hanratty, Peter Symonds and Sara Vickers.