The Lady From the Sea: NHB Classic Plays

Shelley was born in Calcutta and moved to London with her family when she was a child. She was a winner in the ICA's New Blood fiction competition (1996) with her short story Via Calcutta, published in the on-line anthology Endangered Species. Shrapnel was produced by The Steam Industry at BAC (1999). Falling was at the Bush Theatre (2002) where Shelley was the Pearson writer-in-residence. Radio work includes devising and co-writing The Magpie Stories, Calcutta Kosher, and The Sound Of Silence, all for Radio Four. She adapted (with John Harvey) Paul Scott's The Raj Quartet, which was broadcast on Radio Four in 2005. She is under commission to the Bush Theatre for Moses Mohammed, and Tamasha Theatre for Partitions. She has written a 90' film, The Wedding Dress, for Touchpaper TV. Shelley has compiled and edited Twelve Days, an anthology published in November 2004.

'a new adaptation of the work by acclaimed English playwright David Eldridge'
'David Eldridge's superb new version plunges headfirst into its strange Freudian depths without neglecting its sly humour. 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.'
'The Lady from the Sea encompasses all those familiar Ibsen themes: duty, responsibility, the position of women and how the past encroaches on the future. But it is about something more slippery and moist, too: Ellida is not suffering from nerves as her husband believes, she is in the grip of the madness of sexual and emotional obsession.'
'this fine new version of the text by David Eldridge keeps the language lyrical yet lean, laced with a mordant wit.'
'an adaptation by David Eldridge every bit as poetic and absorbing as his versions of Ibsen's The Wild Duck and John Gabriel Borkman'
'Something of an Ibsen specialist now, what with John Gabriel Borkman and The Wild Duck at the Donmar under his belt, 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.'

David Eldridge's previous translations of Ibsen (Wild Duck and John Gabriel Borkman) have been highly successful and widely acclaimed. Accolades include the Critic's Circle Best Revival Award 2006.