Ghosts, 24.10.13

Update 18/11/13:  Eyre has just been awarded the 'Best Director' Olivier for "Ghosts".  Good to see the Olivier Panel share my view of this show!

"I'm inclined to think that we are all ghosts, Pastor Manders, every one of us.  It's not just what we inherit from our mothers and fathers that haunts us.  It's all kinds of old defunct theories, all sorts of old defunct beliefs"

Director (Sir) Richard Eyre

I hadn’t expected another Ibsen production to match Michael Grandage’s 2007 ‘Jon Gabriel Borkman’ but Richard Eyre’s production of ‘Ghosts’ for the Almeida was a triumph.  Played straight-through without an interval, in a lucid adaptation by Eyre, this had all the power of “Long Day’s Journey Into Night” in only half the playing-time.  

Originally “Gengangere” (‘something that walks again’), ‘Ghosts’ acquired its English title from its translator, to Ibsen's chagrin. Banned by the Lord Chamberlain for its defence of free love and women’s rights, its attack on religion and its mentions of syphilis and euthanasia, ‘Ghosts’' first performance in Britain in 1891 famously generated a firestorm of moral indignation. 

Will Keen as Pastor Manders

The tone of unremitting gloom was set from the start as the sound of pelting rain echoed around Tim Hatley’s Biedermeier set.  I’ve rarely, if ever, seen such a taut duet as between Lesley Manville (who played Cécile Volanges in the original 1985 production of “Les Liaisons Dangereuses”) as Helen Alving and Will Keen as Pastor Manders, the butt of Ibsen’s attacks on conventional morality.  Manders’ desertion of Helen for the priesthood had, in effect, condemned her to a loveless marriage with the philandering Captain Alving. 

Lesley Manville's Mrs Alving

Will Keen’s Manders, swivel-eyed and fingers nervously tapping legs, was as quick to rush to misplaced judgments on others as to cover his own tracks when found wanting.  Dressed in black bustle, Lesley Manville’s Mrs Alving, initially all spirited efficiency, crumpled visibly as events unfolded, her elegant face and resonant voice perfectly pitched to convey suffering.  Twenty-two year-old Jack Lowden was excellent too as her “worm-eaten” but dignified son Oswald, upon whose shoulders the sins of the father were visited.  Charlotte McKenna as the maid Regina and Brian McCardie as her alcoholic but well-intentioned adoptive father played both characters in broad Scots, highlighting the class aspect of Ibsen’s social commentary. 

Jack Lowden as Oswald and Lesley Manville as Mrs Alving

Clouded glass walls conjured up the mists of the fjords and added to the sense the characters were looking at their pasts through a glass darkly.  The sound of the flames noisily consuming the Alvings’ orphanage at the end of Act Two signalled nemesis, rather like the famous ‘breaking string’ in “The Cherry Orchard”, .  

That an 1881 play could pack as much punch in 2013 gave one a sense of the kind of massive impact it must have had on first appearance.

An oddly invigorating experience and a shoe-in for an Olivier!