‘Ghosts are ever present in the shadows of our thoughts’

It is more than 30 years since I saw Katie Mitchell’s production at the RSC’s Other Place, so I was delighted to be invited to review Mike Poulton’s adaptation of Ibsen’s Ghosts which ran at CoPs last week. Director Paul Morton said  ‘I feel it reduces the distance in time between these characters and ourselves’. I thought so too.

This sharp 2018 adaptation asks how much has changed since it was written over 100 years ago, and I left the theatre on Saturday night thinking “not that much, particularly for women”. The  moral dilemmas and societal attitudes are still relevant, but updated to resonate with today’s audiences. It’s sparse and tense, with a thriller-like quality that builds up the tension, so by the end of the first half there was a distinctly claustrophobic atmosphere in the auditorium, coupled with excitement about what would happen next.

A shattering story of the consequences of secrets and lies, Ghosts was greeted in its early years of production with such damning descriptions as “a dirty deed done in public.”  You may not need me to tell you the story of this Ibsen classic, but here it is.

Helen Alving is a widow, living in Norway, on the family estate  that she managed for 20 years, while her husband drank and womanised until he died of alcoholism. We meet her there, on the night before the opening of the orphanage that has been built in memory of her husband who the local people, especially the pastor, think was a pillar of society.

The first surprise of  the evening was the set, the conservatory, not cluttered with Victorian paraphernalia, but elegant and simple – more of which later.  Regina, the maid (a perfectly cast Alex Kennedy) is trying to get rid of her supposed father, Jacob Engstrand, carpenter and drunk, who has come to tell her that he has almost finished his work on the orphanage, and plans to return to his home in the nearby town, and implores Regina to come with him.

Danny Swanson, limping, shabby, imbues Engstrand with a  kind of crafty charm that has me almost believing him when he explains that he wants to open a hotel for sailors and, though he knows this sounds like a disreputable establishment, claims that it will only accommodate captains and other distinguished guests. Clear thinking and ambitious, Regina knows what he has in mind for her, and so do we! He exits, disappointed, accusing her of being an undutiful daughter.

When he reappears in later scenes,  Swanson ups the comic ante, and it’s such a relief to laugh! It doesn’t detract from the tragedy;  somehow, it enhances it.  I was reminded of Shakespeare’s fools, but Swanson is much funnier!

Pastor Manders arrives, upright and confident, come to perform the orphanage opening ceremony, and Helen greets him, for the first time in ten years, with a puzzling mixture of emotions, so nuanced by Lorna Thompson, and I wonder if she (Helen) had been in love with him.  Des Turner’s masterly portrayal of Manders convinces us of his delusional naivety. He accuses Helen of sending Oswald away because she couldn’t handle the pressures of motherhood and tells her she is a failure as a mother – a terrible thing to hear – probably every mother in the theatre felt that one!

Oswald joins them, and the ghosts start to surface. Liam Evans gives a brilliant depiction of the boy whose mother sent him away to Paris to shelter him from the knowledge of his father’s degeneracy and now returns harbouring syphilis, his paternal inheritance.

Helen Alving, is at the heart of the play a woman trapped by duty, regret, and the suffocating grip of societal expectations, she spends Ghosts unravelling painful truths.  In an early, powerful scene she tells the truth about her late husband:

“I had to endure it all by myself. I couldn’t bear the judgment and hypocrisy of society.”

Manders is shocked: “This is unthinkable. How could you keep such a terrible secret?”

Lorna Thompson’s portrayal of Helen Alving is stunning throughout –  but it’s the final scene with Oswald that has the greatest emotional impact. She watches her son succumb to his illness, begging her to give him the morphine pills, and she holds them in her hand, unable to decide whether or not to kill him.

And, if I thought this play was no longer relevant, here we are again, in the middle of the assisted dying debate!

Production values did more than justice to the excellent performances.  The wooden structure of the set, immediately recognisable as Chris Janes’s work, was dressed with minimal white furniture and lush plants, while outside was only darkness.  The lighting inside was so effective and subtle I barely noticed it, and the sound of rain, never loud enough to distract from the dialogue, was relentless enough to heighten the sense of foreboding and entrapment. Wardrobe got it right,  with elegant costumes – Helen’s tailored dress, Regina’s crisp dress and apron, all looked fresh and authentic, even Engstrand’s.

CONCLUSION

This is supposed to be just a review, and not a dissertation, but I can never resist a bit of analysis, and Ghosts lends itself to it.  Although his theories were developed after the play was written, Freud’s statement “ghosts are ever present in the shadows of our thoughts” could almost serve as a thesis for this play — what we try to ignore or suppress will inevitably return to shape our fate.

I really loved this production, classy, clean, with a uniformly talented cast, flawlessly directed by Paul Morton.