In Willy Russell’s play Educating Rita, Rita’s tutor sets as the subject for an essay “Suggest how you would resolve the staging difficulties inherent in a production of Ibsen’s Peer Gynt”. Her response is “Do it on the radio”. Heeding Rita’s sound advice, we have created this audio production.

The starting point for this adaptation was a translation of Ibsen’s full script by Robert Farquharson Sharp (1864–1945). Like most translators of Ibsen’s verse, he was of the understandable opinion that, to be faithful to the original, one can retain either the metre or the rhyme but not both; again like most, he opted for the former albeit less than rigorously.

Colin Macnee has abridged the script to about one third of its full extent (giving a duration of 90 minutes) and has rewritten it entirely in regular-metre rhyming verse, with the metre varying by scene. Apart from cuts, he is fairly faithful to the original text in the early scenes, but departs substantially as the play progresses. Throughout, however, the script follows the trajectory of Ibsen’s story, and it retains the most significant events and most of the characters. Much of the deleted content is satire on national stereotypes and political affairs in 19th century Norway and other European countries, material that is likely to mean little to a modern audience. We hope that the overall interpretation remains true to the spirit of the original.

As in the original production, incidental music plays an important role. Multi-instrumental folk musician Giles Lewin, who is familiar with the traditional music of Scandinavia and north Africa, is ideally suited to provide the score. We also include a few favourites from Grieg’s suite, including a lung-bursting narration of In the Hall of the Mountain King!