The Lady from the Sea

David Eldridge's new version of Ibsen's classic play, published to coincide with its premiere at the Royal Exchange Theatre, Manchester, October 2010. When the lighthouse keeper's daughter Ellida meets the widower Dr Wangel, she tries to put her long-lost first love far behind her and begin a new life as a wife and stepmother. But the tide is turning, an English ship is coming down the fjord, and the undercurrents threaten to drag a whole family beneath the surface in this passionate and sweeping drama. Ellida must choose between the values of the land: solidity and reliability against those of the sea: mystery and fluidity. Ibsen's lyrical and still startlingly modern masterpiece, anticipated the emergence of psychoanalysis and talking cures. Similar toHedda Gablerand A Doll's House, The Lady from the Sea vibrantly explores the constrained social position of women, exploring themes of choice, marriage, responsibility and freedom. David Eldridge's translation is subtle, faithful and sensitive to Ibsen's language, and makes this classic play accessible to the English reader without compromising any of the original's intensely poetic and atmospheric tone.

Henrik Ibsen (1828-1906) was a Norwegian playwright and poet whose realistic, symbolic and often controversial plays revolutionized European theatre. He is widely regarded as the father of modern drama. His acclaimed plays include A Doll's House, Ghosts, Hedda Gabler, An Enemy of the People and The Pillars of the Community.  Translator David Eldridge has written plays including Market Boy (NT), Serving it Up, A Week with Tony, Under the Blue Sky, M.A.D. and Incomplete and Random Acts of Kindness (Royal Court). He adapted Festen which was a smash-hit in 2004 .

"David Eldrige's new version of The Lady from the Sea (1888) is highly commendable - it's lucid, sufficiently lyrical and attentively colloquial but not showily, distractingly so."—Daily Telegraph "This fine new version of the text by David Eldridge keeps the language lyrical yet lean, laced with a mordant wit."—The Times (of  London) "David Eldridge's superb new version plunges headfirst into its strange Freudian depths without neglecting its sly humor. This is writing that is attuned to the tug of unspoken desire that threatens to drag us all under, but also to the embarrassing misunderstandings of everyday life. Encompasses all those familiar Ibsen themes: duty, responsibility, the position of women and how the past encroaches on the future."—The Guardian