This new version of Henrik Ibsen‘s play will run at the Bridge Theatre from the 24th September until the 26th November.

It has been announced that Simon Russell Beale will play the title role in Henrik Ibsen’s John Gabriel Borkman when it heads to the Bridge Theatre later this year. Further casting has yet to be announced.

Simon Russell Beale (John Gabriel Borkman) was last at the Bridge in A Christmas Carol and Bach & Sons, both also directed by Nicholas Hytner. His previous theatre credits include The Lehman Trilogy at National Theatre, in the West End and on Broadway. His other collaborations with Hytner include The Alchemist, Much Ado About Nothing, Major Barbara, Collaborators, London Assurance and Timon of Athens, all at the National Theatre. As well as being the recipient of multiple theatre awards, in 2003 he was made a CBE for his services to the Arts and in 2019 he was made a Knight Batchelor.

John Gabriel Borkman, once an illustrious entrepreneur, has been brought low by a prison sentence for fraud. As he paces alone in an upstairs room, bankrupt and disgraced, he is obsessed by dreams of his comeback. Downstairs, his estranged wife plots the restoration of the family name. When her sister arrives unannounced, she triggers a desperate showdown with the past.

Directed by Nicholas Hytner, this new version of the play has been written by Lucinda Coxon (Herding Cats, Happy Now, The Eternal Not, Nostalgia, The Shoemaker’s Wife, Vesuvius, Wishbones, Three Graces, The Ice Palace and Waiting at the Water’s Edge). The rest of the creative team has yet to be confirmed.

John Gabriel Borkman will play at the Bridge Theatre from the 24th September until the 26th November.