HARRY Potter actor Alfie Enoch has adapted a 130-year old play for modern audiences and hopes youngsters will be among those enjoying it in Poole this week.

The 24-year-old is best known for playing Dean Thomas in the hugely successful films but took his hand to writing a new version of Henrik Ibsen’s Ghosts as he believes the story remains important.

“I think the play is hugely relevant to modern society,” Alfie said.

“The idea of systems propagating themselves to the detriment of the individual is unlikely to ever lose its significance. Ghosts has a lot to teach us about the importance of change and the need to challenge authority and that which is accepted; it compels us to be critical.”

Ghosts tells the story of Helen Alving, trapped in a world where the ‘dead ideas’ preached by Pastor Manders rule outright.

She is desperately trying to conceal her husband’s philandering past by building an orphanage in his name and under the pastor’s guiding hand.

But the return of her estranged son Oswald brings Helen’s ghosts back to haunt her and all hopes of success are reduced to ashes.

And though it was written in 1881 Alfie feels there are clear parallels with our own society. And in his new version the pious leaders of the past have been replaced by our own custodians of the status quo with money as their new religion.

Alfie said the Sell A Door theatre company were originally looking to use the 1881 translation.

He said: “They held a reading of the text which I took part in and no one was quite convinced that version would work for a modern audience, so I volunteered to adapt it.

“I had read the part of Manders and I thought the way he’s treated by Ibsen was one of the play’s great challenges. That’s what drew me in.

“And I think the most important thing is for the story to be well told.

And Alfie, right, who appeared in Broadchurch, filmed in Bridport, is hoping younger audiences can get more interested in theatre.

He said: “Younger audiences have the capacity to invigorate theatre and prevent it from becoming a platform for “dead ideas”, so they’ve a vitally important part to play in any healthy theatre.

“Theatre has so much to contribute to society, but it needs to get more of society involved, and that doesn’t just mean young people. “

Ghosts is at Lighthouse in Poole’s on Thursday and Friday.