Fabrication is debut play at Notting Hill's The Print Room

A new theatre opened this week in West London's Notting Hill. The Print Room is co-founded by theatre director Lucy Bailey, who directs the UK premiere of Italian film-maker Pier Paolo Pasolini's stage play Fabrication.

It has taken Bailey, who recently directed Macbeth at Shakespeare's Globe, a long time to pull this play off.

The story, about a father who has a nervous breakdown and becomes obsessed by his teenage son, is said to be an inversion of the Oedipus myth. It stars Jasper Britton and has been adapted by poet Jamie McKendrick. Pasolini, the revered director of films such as Accattone, The Gospel According to St Matthew and Oedipus Rex wrote six tragedies for the theatre, but they are largely unknown outside of Italy.

Twenty years ago, Bailey was invited to adapt and direct Pasolini's film and novel Teorema for Florence's Maggio Musicale and the Munich Biennale. This fuelled her passion for Pasolini. "I started watching all his films, and I have to say his films are the biggest influence in my life as a theatre director," says Bailey.

Then the actress and translator Gillian Hanna got in touch with her about Pasolini's plays.

"We collaborated for years to get Fabrication staged but it got rejected, partly because of its subject matter, but also because it's all written in blank verse. The penny dropped two years ago; we realised we needed a poet to capture Pasolini's poetry.

"He is revered as a poet in Italy and without honouring the poetry it was hard to communicate the piece properly."

'Fabrication' is at The Print Room, London W2 (www.the-print-room.org) to 4 December