"We may even be ghosts ourselves. I look out there - everywhere there are spirits - everywhere - in numbers like grains of sand. And we're all - all of us - so pathetically afraid of the light."

Helen Alving is preparing to open an orphanage in memory of her late husband when her son Osvald returns home after many years abroad. As she begins to feel the presence of ghosts from the past, he discovers that there is more to his mystery illness than he first thought. Long-hidden secrets unravel and his father’s legacies emerge – only by uncovering the truth can they both be set free.

Ghosts is the most accomplished play of Ibsen’s middle period, in a sparse, tense version by Mike Poulton that crackles with energy. Like a thriller, the revelations rise to fever pitch. Characters tell truths, half-truths, lies – conscious and unconscious – and there are ghosts everywhere.