The Coronet Theatre is the home of exceptional international arts in a re-imagined and restored Grade II listed theatre in London’s Notting Hill. Both its programme and the building’s restoration are curated by Artistic Director & CEO Anda Winters in collaboration with artists from across the globe.
TCT’s mission is to engage, educate, and empower our diverse audiences with new perspectives on global arts. We platform both emerging and renowned artists from all over the world, creating a vibrant space where cultures collide and ideas come alive.
THE NORWEGIAN IBSEN COMPANY
THE STORY OF PEER GYNT: AN EVENING
WITH KÅRE CONRADI
19 - 21 Feb
By Henrik Ibsen, adapted by Elisabeth Gording and Kåre Conradi
Norwegian star Kåre Conradi’s critically acclaimed one-man dramatised lecture about one of Ibsen’s most famous and colourful characters, Peer Gynt.
Since discovering the play at 17, Conradi has had a passionate connection with Peer Gynt. In just over an hour, he moves effortlessly between storyteller and the feckless Peer himself to shed new light on Ibsen’s legendary play.
Peer Gynt is the story of a charming but lazy and arrogant young man who leaves home to seek his fortune. Embarking on a series of fantastic voyages around the world, he has one incredible adventure after another.
This charismatic stripped back performance goes to the core of what makes Ibsen one of the most performed writers in the world.
Performed in English with some Norwegian
CAST & CREATIVE TEAM
POST-SHOW TALK
Join us on for a Q&A with Kåre Conradi after the performance on Friday 20 February.This event is free for ticket holders.
KÅRE CONRADI
Kåre Conradi is one of Norway’s foremost actors, with a prolific career on stage, screen, and television.
Kåre is a permanent actor at the National Theatre of Norway, where he has played in major classical and contemporary dramas. He has won the Wildenvey Award for his interpretations and presentations of literature and poetry. He has played leading men in both Shakespeare and Ibsen productions at home and abroad and is the founder and Artistic Director of the Norwegian Ibsen Company.
Conradi played the pilot and all the planet-figures in Nick Lloyd Webber’s world premiere of the musical The Little Prince at the Lyric Theatre in Belfast. He played Edward IV in Trevor Nunn’s revival of Wars of the Roses at Rose Theatre, Kingston.
Kåre received the Hedda Award for his portrayal of Richard III at the National Theatre of Norway and has appeared in several series for BBC (Clique and W1A), ITN (Plebs) NBC, (The Philanthropist) and HBO (Industry).
The Netflix hit series Norsemen, where Kåre plays the chieftain Orm, has captivated audiences worldwide and was described by The New York Times as one of the greatest comedies of the past decade.
The 2023 film The First Christmas on Cobbler Street, where Conradi plays Cobbler Andersen, was a critical success and became the highest-grossing film of 2023 in Norway.The Netflix series Billionaire Island premiered in September 2024.
Kåre has had leading roles in numerous musicals in Norway such as Singing in the Rain, My Fair Lady, and Mamma Mia. Kåre has performed at the prestigious Palladium Theatre in London, sung with big band at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas, and held major concerts across Norway, performing in a variety of formats from duos to jazz quartets, big bands, and military orchestras.
In addition to his stage and screen, Kåre Conradi has very often lent his voice to various international animated films. He provided the Norwegian voice for Ernesto de la Cruz in Coco (2017) - DisneyPixar’s celebrated film.
In 2023, he dubbed the goat Valentino in the Norwegian version of Disney’s Wish, a highly anticipated animated film from Disney. His voice also features in the Norwegian version of Hugh Grant’s Oompa Loompa in Wonka (2023) among many other movies. He recently finished reading his fifth audiobook in English of the Nobel prize winner Jon Fosse.
Conradi will soon appear in the forthcoming Netflix series Harry Hole by Jo Nesbø
Photo by Eir-J. Bue
DIRECTOR’S NOTE
I remember a small auditorium in Dingwall. Perhaps one of the most magical spaces I have ever performed in. It was also one of the first.This was before drama school began and before my adult journey as an actor truly started.
It was the Aberdeen International Youth Festival in the summer of 1991, and we were on a mini tour with a Norwegian youth theatre. I played Peer Gynt alongside a cast of dear friends.
At the end of the play, Peer tells the sun that it has wasted its rays on an empty house where the owner was never at home.Then he says he wants to climb once more to the highest peak and watch the sun rise again. I was 19, and I felt those words sparkle - in my heart and in that auditorium.To have the privilege of speaking a text that truly understands what life is about felt like a superpower back then. It still does.
My one-man production began with that youth theatre. It has evolved throughout my life.
Whenever I return to Peer Gynt - whether in full-scale productions as Peer, as the Mountain King, as the Passenger, or simply as myself inside a lighthouse by the coast, in a classroom, or in an auditorium in Mumbai - each performance adds another layer of life to this monologue. A layer is added when life makes you tingle with joy, and another, as we say in Norway, when you feel as though you ’ ve been struck in the face with a wet dishcloth… or something far worse.
You cannot escape the truths in Ibsen’s Peer Gynt as life moves on, because Ibsen understands, perhaps better than anyone, what life is, or what it might have been.
The journey toward a full English version of this monologue also began with the youth theatre, but it deepened when I founded The Norwegian Ibsen Company. Robert Williamson of the British Shakespeare Company invited me to the Edinburgh Fringe, suggesting that I should “get the word out that a long-awaited company has emerged.” On the first night, I performed for one audience member, a young actor from London, if I remember correctly.Then the audiences grew.
I remain deeply grateful to Robert for his support, and to our producer André and all the remarkable artists and team members who continue, every day, to expand the joy and reach of The Norwegian Ibsen Company.
To illuminate and speak the truth about humanity in our time is not only vital, it is urgent.
And it still feels, and always will feel, like a superpower.
THE NORWEGIAN IBSEN COMPANY
Ibsen is the most performed dramatist in the world after William Shakespeare. However Norway did not have a professional Ibsen Company until ten years ago, when one of Norway’s leading actors, Kåre Conradi, founded the Norwegian Ibsen Company.
The company ’ s goal is to communicate Ibsen’s stories with conviction and power, using the country’s leading artists to create a theatrical bridge with the rest of the world and Ibsen’s homeland.
The Norwegian Ibsen Company makes a very welcome return to collaborate with The Coronet following critically acclaimed and popular productions of The Wild Duck, When We Dead Awaken and The Lady from The Sea.The company brings a distinctive and authentic Norwegian perspective on the dramatic and comic genius of Norway’s greatest playwright.
“Working in partnership with The Coronet over the last 8 years has been a privilege that’s enabled us to make work that has revealed an insight and humour of Ibsen to both English and Norwegian audiences.” - Kåre Conradi, Artistic Director,The Norwegian Ibsen Company
- Photo byTakuya Matsumi
THE NORWEGIAN IBSEN COMPANY AT THE CORONET THEATRE
Photo by Tristram Kenton
THE LADY FROM THE SEA, 2019
Photos by Tristram Kenton
WHEN WE DEAD AWAKEN, 2022
Photos by Tristram Kenton
THE WILD DUCK, 2024
Photo by Tristram Kenton
Photos by Tristram Kenton
HENRIK IBSEN
Henrik Ibsen (Norwegian pronunciation: [ˈhɛnɾɪk ˈ ɪpsən]; 20 March 1828 – 23 May 1906) was a major 19th-century Norwegian playwright, theatre director, and poet. He is often referred to as “the father of prose drama” and is one of the founders of Modernism in the theatre. His major works include Brand, Peer Gynt, An Enemy of the People, Emperor and Galilean, A Doll’s House, Hedda Gabler, Ghosts, The Wild Duck, Rosmersholm, and The Master Builder.
Several of his plays were considered scandalous to many of his era, when European theatre was required to model strict mores of family life and propriety. Ibsen’s work examined the realities that lay behind many façades, revealing much that was disquieting to many contemporaries. It utilized a critical eye and free inquiry into the conditions of life and issues of morality.The poetic and cinematic play Peer Gynt, however, has strong surreal elements.
Ibsen is often ranked as one of the truly great playwrights in the European tradition. Richard Hornby describes him as “ a profound poetic dramatist - the best since Shakespeare“. He influenced other playwrights and novelists such as George Bernard Shaw, Oscar Wilde, James Joyce, and Eugene O’Neill. Many critics consider him the greatest playwright since Shakespeare.
Photo by Gustav Borgen
Ibsen wrote his plays in Dano-Norwegian (the common written language of Denmark and Norway) and they were published by the Danish publisher Gyldendal. Although most of his plays are set in Norway often in places reminiscent of Skien, the port town where he grew up Ibsen lived for 27 years in Italy and Germany, and rarely visited Norway during his most productive years. Born into a merchant family connected to the patriciate of Skien, his dramas were shaped by his family background. He was the father of Prime Minister Sigurd Ibsen.
AN INTERVIEW WITH KÅRE CONRADI
Peer Gynt by Edvard Munch courtesy of the National Gallery of Art, Washington
HUNG DANCE
12 - 14 Mar
“Outstanding show. A cathartic show and a wonderful performance.”
Edinburgh Fringe Review La Provence
“Sublime choreography”
K U N I K O M A E D A :
T H E R O O M
SCULPTURE EXHIBITION
Free for ticket holders
Running alongside performances of The Gambler, this exhibition by London-based artist Kuniko Maeda transforms our Print Room Studio into a space of quiet reflection.
Photo by Dimitri Djuric
Maeda combines traditional Japanese craft techniques with contemporary processes to explore transformation, impermanence and sustainability. Her practice embraces material-led abstraction and the quiet poetry of form, exploring subtle shifts in time and space and capturing moments that feel at once familiar and strange.
Rather than treating sculpture as a fixed or isolated object, the works are conceived in direct response to their surroundings: the architecture of the room, the presence of the audience, and the understated rhythms of everyday life within a working theatre. Old furniture – chairs, tables, and other domestic forms – becomes an integral part of the installation.
Photo by Dimitri Djuric
Bearing traces of use and history, Maeda’s objects evoke intimacy and memory, creating a gentle dialogue between past and present. Sculptural forms are placed on or around them, appearing to rest, lean, or wait, as though they belong to the room itself.
The result is an environment in which artworks feel lived-in rather than displayed, quietly coexisting with the space and those who pass through it.
by
Photo
Dimitri Djuric
Works featured:
When a Room Awakens (2025), The Day in Tranquility (2025), Echoes of Shadows (2025), Where Time Fades (2025), Morphed (2025), Core (2025)
Photo by Dimitri Djuric
BY CARYL CHURCHILL
Praise for the original production of Escaped Alone:
“Caryl Churchill’s magnificent play unleashes an intricate, elliptical, acutely female view of the apocalypse. Revolutionary.”
