Synopsis Classic drama about a woman's struggle against prejudice and fear written in 1881. On her country estate, Mrs Alving is building an orphanage in memory of her dead husband. As her son Oswald, a successful artist living in Paris, returns home and the Pastor arrives to dedicate the orphanage, it seems she can finally bury the painful memories of her past. But over the course of one day, the dark secrets and unresolved tensions of the past are brutally exposed. The strange and complex relationships that bind Mrs Alving and her son to their maid Regina, her father Engstrand and to the priest Manders come to light - and we discover the shocking truth about her dead husband.
Actor Iain Glen made his directorial debut this week, helming a production of Ibsen’s 1881 classic Ghosts, in a new version by Frank McGuinness, in which he also stars with Lesley Sharp. The production opened on Tuesday 23 February 2010 (previews from 8 February) at the West End’s Duchess Theatre where it continues until 15 May (See News, 4 Sep 2009).
Set in the Norwegian fjordland, the drama takes place in Mrs Alving’s country house, where she is preparing for the opening of an orphanage, a memorial to her late husband. Mrs Alving’s son Oswald, an artist, returns home for the celebrations. A story of love, betrayal and hypocrisy gradually unfolds as ghosts from the past come back to haunt the family.
First night critics were divided over Glen’s directing success with the production. While admirers deemed it “shockingly good”, “terrifically compelling” and even the best rendering of Ibsen’s classic they’d ever seen, detractors felt that the combination of “over-explicit” dialogue, “unfocussed” performances and “patchy” direction reduced the play to a “depressing” and “coarse melodrama”. There was similar disagreement over whether Glen the actor turns in a “fine” and “witheringly satiric” performance as Pastor Manders, or he’s “overstretched” by the extra duty.
Michael Coveney on Whatsonstage.com (two stars) – “Ibsen’s Ghosts is no longer shocking, just very depressing, which is what I most take from Frank McGuinness’ new version’ ... directed by Iain Glen ... Glen also plays the sneaky Pastor Manders which in this case is one job too many. His accent is curiously wayward ... and the production, overall, is patchy ... The performances are unfocussed, Sharp’s floating elbows and clear-eyed beauty giving way to strain and anxiety and, finally, a sort of gibbering intensity as Treadaway’s Oswald – who is shaking like a dervish from the start of the third act, and blackened after the fire like a chimney sweep – sinks into his syphilitic, epileptic coma ... Nothing seems embedded as this cast of fine actors skim nervously around the edges ... The play just stops two hours after it started (one interval) without dragging you through the mire or leaving you drained, as it should.”
Benedict Nightingale in The Times (four stars) – “The shadow of oppressive fundamentalism also falls powerfully over (the) production ... Not that director Glen lets actor Glen embody only the scary televangelist ... There are delicate touches here too: a complacency and conceit reflected in his looming, preening body-language, a sexual susceptibility suggested by his comical interest in the servant Regina’s young flesh, a hint of vulnerability beneath the scary certainty. This is a fine performance, subtle yet charismatic, one that simultaneously shows the preacher’s power and his weakness. And there’s strong support: from Malcolm Storry as the sleazy hypocrite who dupes Manders; from Sharp as a Mrs Alving rapturously besotted with her boy and quiet yet firm in her defence of his freethinking; and from Treadaway as an Oswald whose mind as well as his clothes might have been dragged through the jungle. I’ve seen some good Ghosts in my time, but none better than this.”
Michael Billington in the Guardian (two stars) – "To me the most shocking thing about this revival, directed by Iain Glen, who also plays Pastor Manders, is the way it treats this grimly ironic play as if it were a coarse melodrama. Frank McGuinness' new version doesn't help ... Ibsen's ‘double-density dialogue’, in which characters say one thing and mean another, is replaced by endless reiteration of a single metaphor ... ‘filth’. The over-explicitness of the dialogue extends to much of the acting. Glen himself has good moments as Manders ... Similarly, Lesley Sharp's Mrs Alving has nice touches ... But she hardly suggests a woman burdened by a past in which she has sacrificed love to duty ... Even Harry Treadaway, who has the right gaunt look for Oswald, is driven to shouting at the top of his lungs in a way that seems incompatible with his wasting physical condition. The only restrained performances come from Jessica Raine ... and from Malcolm Storry ... (The) production (is) for the most part is characterised by a strident obviousness.”
Henry Hitchings in the Evening Standard (three stars) – “When Henrik Ibsen wrote Ghosts in 1881, it seemed a startling indictment of the moral comforts of 19th-century conformism. So much so that it was hard to get it put on ... Now the fuss is difficult to comprehend, notwithstanding Ibsen’s use of syphilis as a metaphor for social decay, and in Iain Glen’s directorial debut, the layered symbolism and morbid comedy of the Norwegian’s writing feel remote ... Ibsen’s concerns are disease, deception, the different motives for loyalty and the past’s toxic bequests but Frank McGuinness’ translation lacks density. Lesley Sharp impresses as Mrs Alving - first playful then weary ... Playing Manders, Glen seems overstretched ... He prowls and preens without achieving real gravitas. In the smaller roles there is exquisitely uncomfortable work from Harry Treadaway, as Oswald, and Jessica Raine, while Stephen Brimson Lewis’ pillared marble design is polished. Yet the production is insufficiently dynamic, and it doesn’t live up to the title’s promise of haunting theatre. In the end it’s worthy, but not incendiary.”
Paul Taylor in the Independent (four stars) – “Further proof that English theatre is going through a wonderfully positive patch is furnished now with this terrifically compelling and often disarmingly comic account of Ibsen's Ghosts. Not only is actor Iain Glen making a most distinguished debut as a director, but he is turning in a witheringly satiric performance as Pastor Manders ... My only niggle (and it was gradually eroded as the production proceeded) is Glen's accent that at first seems to waver between a poor man's Ian Paisley and Gardeners' Question Time. Apart from that, his performance and that of Malcolm Storry, as Engstrand, the dodgy carpenter, are masterly demonstrations ... The bird-like but battle-ready Lesley Sharp breaks your heart as Mrs Alving ... Frank McGuinness' new version derives a lot of energy from pointed, but never over-done alliteration ... Harry Treadaway gives a neurologically naked portrayal that is as audacious as it auspicious ... Shockingly good.”
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Ibsen’s Ghosts is no longer shocking, just very depressing, which is what I most take from Frank McGuinness’ new “version” (who did the translation, then, eh?) directed by Iain Glen with wonderful Lesley Sharp as a fluttering Mrs Alving and startling Harry Treadaway as her stricken, haunted son Oswald.
Glen also plays the sneaky Pastor Manders which in this case is one job too many. His accent is curiously wayward, veering from Scottish Calvinist to Irish Episcopal, and the production, overall, is patchy.
Mrs Alving’s house, as designed by Stephen Brimson Lewis in grey panels and reflective windows, is curiously unlived-in, the architect’s model of the orphanage sitting on a side table like an exhibit.
In a play of ceaseless rain and sudden sunlight, sound and lighting by Richard Hammarton and Oliver Fenwick are too tentative, the stage continuously afflicted with rogue shadows, the rain sounding like the heating system in this very stuffy theatre.
The performances are similarly unfocussed, Sharp’s floating elbows and clear-eyed beauty giving way to strain and anxiety and, finally, a sort of gibbering intensity as Treadaway’s Oswald – who is shaking like a dervish from the start of the third act, and blackened after the fire like a chimney sweep – sinks into his syphilitic, epileptic coma.
Admittedly, if you’ve seen great mother/son turns like those of Irene Worth and Peter Eyre, Vanessa Redgrave and Adrian Dunbar, or Jane Lapotaire and Simon Russell Beale, this couple will pale in comparison. But only because they are playing the scene for maximum tacked-on hysteria and minimal emotional truth. You don’t feel like crying.
You don’t feel like laughing, either, although a programme note oddly suggests there’s a comedy lurking here. No sign of that, nor of any sexual might-have-been between Manders and Mrs Alving. Nothing seems embedded as this cast of fine actors skim nervously around the edges.
The chain of incestuous debauchery unleashed by the dead father, with his own son sniffing salvation in the feisty maid (Jessica Raine) who is his half-sister, and her father, the carpenter Engstrand (embodied with an oak-like ferocity by Malcolm Storry), planning a sailors’ whorehouse, is played as a matter of fact, not tragic misfortune.
It’s not clear, really, whether Regina is leaving to become a prostitute, or whether Mrs Alving will use the morphine tablets in an assisted suicide. The play just stops two hours after it started (one interval) without dragging you through the mire or leaving you drained, as it should.
Michael Coveney says this play no longer has the ability to shock, and, as far as this production goes, I entirely agree. I saw it at a matinee performance with only about a quarter capacity audience, which must be dispiriting for the cast, but even so, the acting was uninvolving and oddly mannered, especially from Lesley Sharp as Mrs Alving. And why was it necessary for Pastor Manders to have an Irish accent, especially one as random as that produced by Iain Glen? The best performance came from the solid Malcolm Storry as Engstrand. Harry Treadaway as Oswald made the transition from spoiled prodigal to gibbering syphilitic too quickly, but this was more the fault of the condensed McGuiness version. This is still a great play which, in a better production, can move the audience to tears. It is a pity that this version is being withdrawn before the end of its appointed run, for I feel it had a lot more to offer, given a chance to establish itself. - sc
17 Mar 10
I have to agree with Michael Coveney I saw this Friday and it was truly awful. A less in how to destroy Ibsen. The cast were not helped by a version "translation" by Frank McGuiness which condensed the action into barely two hours. The lighting was some of the worst I've seen in the West End. This play should be atmospheric. The set also didn't help the players with no sense of Sweden or claustrophobia.As for Iain Glen directing and acting in this production, this was a definite mistake. In ACT One Mrs Alving seemed quite lost at times. A huge disappointment. - Stuart
01 Mar 10
Sort of enjoyed 'Ghosts'. Hard not to like a play where an orphanage burns down and four out of the five characters get syphilis.
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Compact plot: Mrs Alving uses her husband’s legacy to build an orphanage with help of old flame Pastor Manders at whose candlelight supper to open the place, it burns to the ground. Ghostly skeletons springdans out of the family closet when it’s revealed Captain Alving had spread it about a bit, peppering the fjords with genetically-infected illegitimates in the days before penicillin and the son of the house can’t marry the maid he fancies because she’s his sister. He goes blind and dies.
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What raises this production so far above the reverential deference typically accorded Ibsen is the design and some excellent performances.
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The central dynamic is Lesley Sharp straining at her leash about as far from the cobbles of comfortable Granada dramas as possible and in wonderful contrast to her exhilarating recent performance as bipolar leopard-print Mari in Little Voice. Raw-boned and sharp-elbowed she brings the internal torture of Mrs Alving to the surface in a clear and un-actressy way, abetted by the patently conversational fresh translation by Frank McGuinness.
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Pastor Manders is harder to appreciate since Iain Glen, who also directs, chose an accent precisely midway between Mr Hudson in Upstairs, Downstairs and Ian Paisley. As the tortured painter son, Harry Treadaway is beyond remarkable in his overnight progression from pampered prodigal to twitching degradation caught between lover and mother. Someone sign this boy up for ‘Hamlet’, he’s a natural.
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Most productions of ‘Ghosts’, like ‘A Doll’s House’ are internalized and underlit. Stephen Brimson Lewis sets this one in a glassy rain-lashed conservatory emphasising the indistinction of the world outside, brilliantly lit by Oliver Fenwick as though by shining light on the family’s problems we can see them, and ourselves, more clearly.
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My enjoyment of this performance was greatly enriched by the octogenarian blind lady who sat next to me at the matinee. Her father, who was sixty when she was born, was a Swedish professor of literature who came to England as London correspondent of a Svenska Dagbladet and had been a close chum of Strindberg before being unfortunately killed in the blitz. Her insights into Scandinavian culture, and the rivalries between Strindberg and Ibsen were even more illuminating than the play. ----
more reviews at www.johnnyfoxlondon.blogspot.com in the blog now called A KICK IN THE STALLS
- JohnnyFox
26 Feb 10
Some of the lukewarrm reviews seem to believe that Ghosts has lost its' ability to shock but surely a good production will recreate the moral values of the time. The play has also gained unexpected topicality as part of the discussion on assisted suicide. Actually this isn't a great production but I suspect the cast are still finding their way into their character's complex emotions. Lesley Sharp doesn't have the necessary moral indignation and Iain Glen is not as intense as usual - not helped by a bizarre accent which seems to mix Jethro with Ian Paisley. He may have taken on too much with directing resposnsibilities as well but I would lay odds he will be much better by the end of the run. The production is true to the period and doesn't attempt to find any humour which doesn't exist in the original text but above all it is Ibsen's genius which makes Ghosts a great addition to the West End in a theatre of just the right size. - David Baxter
24 Feb 10
I loved it. - Emma
24 Feb 10
Well Ibsen is never fun but enjoyed the play and thought the cast was very good specially Lesley Sharp and Harry Treadaway. I take my hat off to Lesley to have come straight from a very wordy role in Little Voice and into another very wordy emotional role. I recommend it - Joe Spiteri
Opened 25 Nov 1929. 476 seats. Bought from Andrew Lloyd Webber and now owned by Broadway producer Max Weitzenhoffer and Nica Burns. Society of London Theatre member.
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