Northern Lights: The First Warning / Kirkenes

A Double Bill by August Strindberg and Sarah Sigal

21 November 2025 13:00

Home / Northern Lights: The First Warning / Kirkenes

OT Northern Lights Season

Our Northern Lights series of script-in-hand readings on a Nordic theme concludes as it began, with a double bill of plays over a century apart. In The First Warning, the Swedish master August Strindberg offers a characteristically acerbic vision of the end of a relationship. While in a specially commissioned new play, Sarah Sigal’s Kirkenes imagines life today on western Europe’s remote Arctic border with Russia.

In The First Warning, set in Germany, Strindberg dissects the final hours of a marriage. As a successful but self-obsessed artist succumbs to jealousy, and his wife rails against the stifling paranoia she is subjected to, a final showdown between the spouses hurtles to its inevitable conclusion. Originally written in 1893, this English translation by Eivor Martinus was first performed at London’s Gate theatre in 1985.

Closing our season is a brand-new play by playwright and novelist Sarah Sigal. In Norway’s far-flung Arctic north, the port town of Kirkenes is the setting-off point for western Europe’s last remaining bus service to Russia. Reluctantly tending bar at her mother’s run-down hotel, in a town whose heyday has passed but whose links to Russia have thrown it into the spotlight, Astrid would rather be anywhere else. But when a shock discovery is made in one of the hotel rooms, life in Kirkenes suddenly becomes much more interesting.

This double-bill concludes our Northern Lights season of Lunchtime Plays on a Nordic theme, which commences on October 31 and runs throughout November.

Directed by Rosie Tricks

August Strindberg (1849-1912) is widely regarded as one of Sweden’s most important and influential writers. He was a foundational figure in the transition from 19th-century naturalism to 20th-century modernism in drama. His early plays such as The Father and Miss Julie revolutionised naturalistic theatre, while later works like To Damascus and The Ghost Sonata broke from realistic settings and linear narrative. His writing was often intensely autobiographical, written with a fierce intensity that mirrored his turbulent life. He remains a towering cultural figure in Sweden and the country’s most prestigious literary prize, the August Prize (Augustpriset), bears his name.

Originally from Chicago, Sarah Sigal is a writer, dramaturg and director working across theatre, film and fiction. Playwriting credits include: Vanishing (CPT), Agent of Influence (Edinburgh, National Tour), World Enough and Time (Park), The Odyssey (Albany), Alice’s Adventures in the New World (Old Red Lion, National Tour) and Dogfight (Arcola). She has taught at numerous British and American universities and is the author of Writing in Collaborative Theatre Making (Bloomsbury, 2016). She was a 2020 LABA Fellow at the 14th St Y (NYC) and a 2013-2014 member of the BBC Writers Room. Her play Spirits was longlisted for the 2023 Women’s Prize for Playwriting and she won a 2023 Society of Authors’ Foundation Grant for fiction. Her first novel The Socialite Spy was published in October 2023 by Lume Books and its sequel, The Paris Spy, was published in September 2025.

Eivor Martinus (1943–2023) was a Swedish-born translator, writer, and theatre practitioner, renowned for her English translations of August Strindberg. Living in London, she brought Swedish drama to international audiences, rendering Strindberg’s powerful language with clarity, immediacy, and sensitivity to performance. Her translations earned her several awards from the Swedish Authors’ Union, recognising her vital role in promoting Scandinavian literature abroad. For many years, she also chaired the Swedish-English Translators’ Association, supporting and inspiring her colleagues in the field. Alongside her translations, she wrote plays and remained a passionate advocate for cross-cultural exchange through theatre and literature.

Rosie Tricks is a director based in London. She trained on the Theatre Directing MFA at Birkbeck and was Resident Assistant Director at the Orange Tree from 2024 – 2025. She is co-directing the upcoming revival of Howard Brenton’s Churchill in Moscow at English Theatre Frankfurt (March 2026).

As Director:
Mad Hatter’s Tea Party (Orange Tree Theatre), Three Short Plays by Tennessee Williams for Orange Tree Lunchtime Plays, Along Came a Magpie (Scarlet Oak Theatre), Gus Runs Away and An Observation on Flirting (Circle Theatre).

As Assistant Director:
Titus Andronicus (Hampstead Theatre), In Praise of Love, Churchill in Moscow and Twelfth Night (Orange Tree Theatre), Animal Farm and Anatomy of a Suicide (Rose Bruford)