Theatre News

Print Room Premieres New Poulton Version of Ibsen’s Dead

4 October 2011

New Notting Hill venue The Print Room will premiere Mike Poulton‘s new adaptation of Ibsen’s final play When We Dead Awaken next month. Titled Judgement Day, the production will be directed by James Dacre and designed by Mike Britton and runs from 21 November to 17 December 2011 (previews from 16 November),

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.

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”.

Director James Dacre recently helmed As You Like It at Shakespeare’s Globe and Precious Little Talent at Trafalgar Studios. His production of The Mountaintop, which began life at Theatre503 in Battersea, won the 2010 Olivier Award for Best New Play.

The Print Room was founded in 2008 by artistic directors Anda Winters and Lucy Bailey. Productions to date include Fabrication by Pier Paulo Pasolini, Alan Ayckbourn’s Snake in the Grass (February / March ‘11), Tennessee Williams’ Kingdom of Earth and Pinter’s One For The Road, a co-production with the Young Vic.