In this radical new version of Peer Gynt, David Hare kidnaps Henrik Ibsen's most famous hero and runs away with him into the twenty-first century.

Stripped of fretwork and greenery, the play is projected into a freewheeling modern world of music, dance, poetry, weddings, coronations, trolls and two-headed children as Peter steals a bride and embarks on an extraordinary lifetime's journey before returning home, finally, to Scotland.

David Hare's Peter Gynt posits the same fundamental question the great Norwegian asked in 1867: does a belief in individualism help or hinder us in trying to live purposefully in the present day?

The play opens at the National Theatre in July 2019 and transfers to the Festival Theatre Edinburgh, for the Edinburgh International Festival.

About the Author
Henrik Ibsen (1828-1906), Norwegian poet and playwright, was one of the shapers of modern theatre, who tempered naturalism with an understanding of social responsibility and individual psychology. His earliest major plays, Brand (1866) and Peer Gynt (1867), were large-scale verse dramas, but with Pillars of the Community (1877) he began to explore contemporary issues. There followed A Doll's House (1879), Ghosts (1881) and An Enemy of the People (1882). A richer understanding of the complexity of human impulses marks such later works as The Wild Duck (1885), Rosmersholm (1886), Hedda Gabler (1890) and The Master Builder (1892), while the imminence of mortality overshadows his last great plays, John Gabriel Borkman (1896) and When We Dead Awaken (1899). David Hare has written over thirty stage plays and thirty screenplays for film and television. The plays include Plenty, Pravda (with Howard Brenton), The Secret Rapture, Racing Demon, Skylight, Amy's View, The Blue Room, Via Dolorosa, Stuff Happens, The Absence of War, The Judas Kiss, The Red Barn, The Moderate Soprano, I'm Not Running and Beat the Devil. For cinema, he has written The Hours, The Reader, Damage, Denial, Wetherby and The White Crow among others, while his television films include Licking Hitler, the Worricker Trilogy, Collateral and Roadkill. In a millennial poll of the greatest plays of the twentieth century, five of the top hundred were his.


Book Information
ISBN 9780571354771
Author Henrik Ibsen
Format Paperback
Page Count 192
Imprint Faber & Faber
Publisher Faber & Faber
Weight(grams) 210g
Dimensions(mm) 200mm * 125mm * 15mm