Helen Edmundson’s first play, Flying, was presented at the National Theatre in 1990. In 1992, she adapted Tolstoy’s
Anna Karenina for Shared
Experience, for whom she
also adapted The Mill on the Floss in
1994. Both won awards,
and both productions were twice revived and extensively toured. Shared
Experience also staged her original adaptation of War and Peace at the National Theatre in 1996, and they toured her
adaptations of Mary Webb’s Gone to Earth in
2004, Euripides’ Orestes in 2006, the new two-part
version of War and Peace in 2008
and the original play Mary Shelley in
2012. Her play The Clearing was first
staged at the Bush Theatre in 1993, winning the John Whiting and Time Out Awards, Mother Teresa Is Dead was premiered at the Royal Court Theatre in
2002, The Heresy of Love was
premiered by the Royal Shakespeare Company in the Swan Theatre in 2012 and
revived at Shakespeare’s Globe in 2015, and Queen Anne was premiered by the Royal
Shakespeare Company in the Swan Theatre in 2015 and revived at the Theatre Royal Haymarket in 2017. Her
adaptation of Jamila Gavin’s Coram Boy premiered at the National Theatre to critical
acclaim in 2005,
receiving a Time Out Award.
It was subsequently revived in 2006 and produced on Broadway in 2007. She
adapted Calderón’s Life Is a Dream for
the Donmar Warehouse in 2009 and Arthur Ransome’s Swallows and Amazons for the Bristol Old Vic in 2010, which
subsequently transferred to the West End before embarking on a national tour in
2012. Her adaptation of Thérèse Raquin premiered
at the Theatre Royal Bath in 2014 and was subsequently produced on Broadway by
Roundabout Theatre Company in 2015. Most recently, her adaptation of Andrea
Levy’s Small Island was produced at the National Theatre in 2019 and revived
in 2022. Edmundson was awarded a Windham Campbell Literature Prize by Yale
University in 2015. She is an associate artist at the Royal Shakespeare Company
and at Bristol Old Vic.
