Renowned filmmaker Ingmar Bergman’s magical masterpiece Fanny & Alexander receives its world stage premiere at The Old Vic in a new translation by BAFTA Award-winning writer Stephen Beresford.

Opening as part of The Old Vic’s bicentenary season, Fanny & Alexander welcomes audiences to a fictional town in 1900s Sweden, a land of gilded romance and glamour in which siblings Fanny and Alexander reside.

But the duo’s world is turned upside down when their widowed mother remarries the iron-willed local bishop, and as creative freedom and rigid orthodoxy clash, a war ensues between imagination and austerity – and for Fanny & Alexander, between a lavish, joyful, playful life… and the severe punishments meted out to them by their callous new stepfather.

Penelope Wilton (Taken At Midnight, West End – Olivier Award for Best Actress) leads a starry cast as Mrs Helena Ekdahl, with Jonathan Slinger (Charlie And The Chocolate Factory, West End)  as Gustav Adolf Ekdahl, Lolita Chakrabarti (Hamlet, Kenneth Branagh Theatre Company) as Almda Ekdahl/Helena Vergérus, and Kevin Doyle (NSFW – Royal Court) playing Bishop Edvard Vergérus.

The role of Fanny will be played by young cast members Zaris Angel Hator, Amy Jayne Leigh, Molly Shenker and Katie Simons, and the role of Alexander will be played by Guillermo Bedward, Kit Connor, Jack Falk and Misha Handley, who will alternate performances.

Ingmar Bergman’s original film of Fanny & Alexander was released in 1982, and is widely regarded as an epic masterpiece, winning four Academy Awards including Best Foreign Language Film, as well as the equivalent Golden Globe Award. Shot on location in Uppsala, Sweden, the film has since been seen in cinemas around the world.

Now, directed by Old Vic Associate Director Max Webster, Fanny & Alexander promises a magical study of childhood, family and love, bringing the immortal film to the London theatre stage for the first time.

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