Joseph Marcell, Sheila Atim, Diana Quick, Marjorie Yates

By Karen Blixen
Adapted by Glyn Maxwell

The Print Room presents a new telling of Karen Blixen’s much-loved tale, adapted for the stage by Glyn Maxwell.

Martine and Philippa live a simple, pious life in a remote Norwegian village, caring for their elderly neighbours. One stormy night a mysterious stranger comes to their door, desperate and exhausted. Babette Hersant is a refugee from revolutionary Paris; they take her in as a housekeeper. When one day Babette wins some money on a lottery and offers to cook a supper for the community, the sisters reluctantly allow her wish. But the heavenly banquet that follows is beyond anything the villagers could imagine, and stirs in their hearts long-lost passions and joys. Soul and body intertwine at this unearthly feast, and nothing in the little town will ever be the same.

Karen Blixen (1885-1962, aka Isak Dinesen) is best known for her memoir Out of Africa, which was made into an Oscar-winning film, as was Babette’s Feast. On winning the Nobel Prize in 1954, Ernest Hemingway is said to have remarked that it should have gone to ‘that beautiful writer, Isak Dinesen…’