August Strindberg 
The Father (NHB Classic Plays) 

August Strindberg’s gripping psychological drama about the battle of the sexes, in a version by Mike Poulton.
Strindberg’s play The Father is about a marriage wrecked by the parents’ need to claim exclusive rights to their daughter’s love, and to determine her future. By turns comic and deeply tragic, it shows an affable, scholarly father fall victim to a once loving wife who will stop at nothing to do what she thinks is right for her child.
The only possible outcome is a grim, yet thrilling fight to the death in circumstances of almost unbearable tension.
Written in 1887, The Father was first staged in Berlin in 1890. This English version by Mike Poulton was first staged at the Minerva Theatre, Chichester, in 2006.
‘Poulton is the adapter of the moment… The Father is franker, more revealing than almost any other play, an X-ray of a gifted, deranged mind’ – Observer
‘Poulton’s terrific new adaptation is absolutely true to Strindberg’s dark spirit… blows the dust off the text while capturing all its wild and idiosyncratic torment… The Father will knock your socks off’ – Telegraph
‘A startling emotional roller-coaster ride’ – Guardian
‘Fully confirms the play’s power to rivet and disturb’ – The Times

About the author

Mike Poulton is an award-winning dramatist whose many adaptations and translations for the stage include: Robert Harris’s Imperium (Royal Shakespeare Company); The York Mystery Plays (directed by Philip Breen at York Minster); Hilary Mantel’s Wolf Hall and Bring Up the Bodies (directed by Jeremy Herrin for the Royal Shakespeare Company); Dickens’s A Tale of Two Cities (directed by James Dacre at the Royal & Derngate, Northampton); Fortune’s Fool (directed by Lucy Bailey at the Old Vic, London); Chekhov’s Uncle Vanya (directed by Lucy Bailey at The Print Room, London); Schiller’s Luise Miller (directed by Michael Grandage for the Donmar Warehouse, London); Anjin: The English Samurai (directed by Gregory Doran for Horipro in Tokyo); Malory’s Morte d’Arthur (directed by Gregory Doran for the Royal Shakespeare Company); Schiller’s Wallenstein (directed by Angus Jackson at Chichester Festival Theatre); Schiller’s Mary Stuart (directed by Terry Hands at Clwyd Theatr Cymru); Ibsen’s The Lady from the Sea (directed by Lucy Bailey at Birmingham Repertory Theatre); Chekhov’s The Cherry Orchard (directed by Philip Franks at Chichester Festival Theatre, and Terry Hands at Clwyd Theatr Cymru); Ibsen’s Rosmersholm (directed by Anthony Page at the Almeida Theatre, London); Strindberg’s The Father (directed by Angus Jackson at Chichester); Myrmidons (directed by Simon Coury at the Samuel Beckett Theatre, Dublin); and a two-part adaptation of Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales (directed by Gregory Doran for the Royal Shakespeare Company, and performed at the Swan Theatre, Stratford-upon-Avon, in the West End, and on tour of the US and Spain).
His acclaimed version of Schiller’s Don Carlos premiered at the Sheffield Crucible in a production directed by Michael Grandage with Derek Jacobi as King Philip II of Spain. It has since been widely performed, including by Rough Magic Theatre Company in Dublin (directed by Lynne Parker), and at the Göteborgs Stadsteater (directed by Eva Bergman). Other productions include Ibsen’s Hedda Gabler (West Yorkshire Playhouse/Liverpool Playhouse); Turgenev’s Fortune’s Fool (directed by Arthur Penn at the Music Box Theater, Broadway; nominated for a Tony Award for Best Play, and winner of seven major awards including the Tony Awards for Best Actor for Alan Bates and Best Featured Actor for Frank Langella); Uncle Vanya (directed by Michael Mayer at the Brooks Atkinson Theatre, Broadway; with Derek Jacobi, Roger Rees and Laura Linney); Three Sisters (directed by Bill Bryden at the Birmingham Rep; with Charles Dance); Ghosts (Theatre Royal Plymouth); The Seagull, Three Sisters, The Dance of Death and an adaptation of Euripides’ Ion (all directed by David Hunt at the Mercury Theatre, Colchester).
He was made an Associate Artist of the Royal Shakespeare Company in 2017.