About the Play:

The Lady From the Sea is a full-length drama by Henrik Ibsen, translated by Kenneth McLeish. It's the story of Ellida, who must chose between a marriage to a dull but decent doctor and an uncharted life at sea with a charismatic sailor she loved many years ago and who suddenly re-appears in her life. Will she suffocate on dry land, or find freedom across the sea? The Lady from the Sea dissects issues of duty, marriage, and agency with raw emotion and disarming resonance.

The Lady from the Sea dissects issues of duty, marriage, and agency with raw emotion and disarming resonance. Ellida Wangel, daughter of a lighthouse-keeper, second wife to dependable but unexciting Dr. Wangel, and step-mother to his daughters Bolette and Hilde. Ellida is tormented both by the loss of their infant son and by the memory of a sailor she met in her teens, and made a pact with to marry when he returned. Now, twenty years later, her marriage is on the rocks, and when a mysterious stranger arrives, Ellida's fears and desires come to the surface. She must decide once and for all where she belongs – should she embrace her connections on land or succumb to the siren song of the sea? Hailed as a watershed moment in Ibsen's writing, The Lady From the Sea is a powerful expression of a woman's search for her own identity, in a world where women are defined by who they are with, instead of who they are or who they could become. This edition includes a full introduction by Stephen Mulrine, biography and suggestions for further reading.

The Lady From the Sea was first staged in 1889.

Cast: 3 female, 5 male, extras

About the Playwright:

Henrik Ibsen (1828-1906) is the second most widely produced dramatist in the world, eclipsed only by Shakespeare. He is revered in Norway as its most famous author and a national symbol, even though he spent much of his life abroad in Italy and Germany. He was largely responsible for the rise of realism in the theatre. In works that possess revelatory power Ibsen challenged his audiences to question conventional morality and social conditions. Often controversial, his works were deeply unsettling to many of his Victorian contemporaries. He is now widely regarded as the "father of modern drama" and one of the greatest dramatists who ever lived.

Kenneth McLeish (1940-1997) was the most widely respected and prolific translator of drama in Britain. His output included all 47 of the surviving classical Greek plays, most of Ibsen and Feydeau, as well as individual plays by Plautus, Moliere, Jarry, Strindberg, Horvath and Labiche.