Helge (Eric Peterson) is celebrating his 60th birthday at their family-run hotel. Gathered together are his loyal wife Elsa (Martha Burns), his daughter Helene (Tara Rosling), his sons Michael (Allan Hawco) and Christian (Philip Riccio), and their guests. A darkly comic journey into forbidden family territory, the time has come for the darkest family skeleton to be revealed and the celebration becomes a weekend that no one will ever forget.

FESTEN is the British stage adaptation of the Danish film of the same name (which was released in North America as The Celebration). The adaptation, by English playwright David Eldridge, was first staged by Canadian producer Marla Rubin at the Almeida Theatre in London, and has since been staged in many countries around the world.

Thomas Vinterberg's 1998 film Festen was critically acclaimed and won the Jury Prize at the Cannes Film Festival that year and is best known for being the first Dogme 95 film (its full title in Denmark is Dogme #1 - Festen). Dogme films are governed by a manifesto that insists on specific production and narrative limitations (such as banning any post-production sound editing), in part as a protest against expensive Hollywood-style filmmaking.

The English language adaptation, which retains the Danish title FESTEN, premiered at the Almeida Theatre in 2004 in a production directed by Rufus Norris, before transferring to a successful West End run. It toured the UK before transferring to Broadway starring Ali MacGraw, Julianna Margulies & Jeremy Sisto. 

Formed in 2004, The Company Theatre collaborates with Canadian and international artists to transcend geographical and artistic borders and bring impeccably performed, thought-provoking theatre to Canadian audiences.

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