Ibsen's 'Ghosts' at People's Light

In this production by People’s Light & Theatre Company, not only the topics, but the language is current. Using a fluent translation by Lanford Wilson, Ghosts unfolds believably, with the use of contemporary American English reflecting Ibsen’s informal language. Too many productions of 19th-century plays try to evoke their time with stuffy syntax and English accents, even when the plays are not set in Great Britain.

Ghosts shocked critics and audiences in the 1880s with its depiction of syphilis, attempted incest, and assisted suicide, on top of Ibsen’s trademark free-thinking woman who rebels against male authority. Critics called it “morbid, unhealthy and disgusting,” “foul and filthy,” and "revoltingly suggestive and blasphemous." Ockham’s Quarterly said “it infects the unsuspecting audience member with the same syphilitic disease of the mind that so afflicts Oswald," one of the main characters in the play.

Despite its radical subject, however, this is a classically restrained play. Everything occurs in a single home in Norway; in fact, in one room of that home, although we see glimpses of the adjoining dining room. James F. Pyne Jr. designed it with attractive heavy carpets, furniture, bric-a-brac, and artwork while grim rain beats against the window.

Secrets coming home to roost

It’s the comfortable home of Helen Alving (Kathryn Petersen), the evening before she is to dedicate an orphanage to the memory of her recently deceased husband. Arriving for the occasion is her old friend and almost-lover, Pastor Manders (Ian Merrill Peakes); the wastrel carpenter Jacob Engstrand (Peter DeLaurier), who drops in on his daughter Regina (Mary Toumanen), Alvings’ serving maid; and Helen’s son Oswald (Keith Conallen), who has been away in Paris for many years.

Manders habitually gives advice to others. Two decades earlier he advised Helen to marry the wealthy Captain Alving even though they both knew he was a womanizer. She followed Mander’s advice, believing that her devotion would eventually reform her husband. It didn’t; when she observed her husband groping their maid, Regina’s mother, she realized he was irredeemable. She took control of the family’s home and finances and sent Oswald away so he would not be corrupted by exposure to his father’s ways. How ironic then, that Oswald now is exhibiting symptoms of inherited syphilis.

Oswald is enraptured by Regina, whom he does not realize is his half-sister. (Engstrand married Regina’s mother to give her respectability and raised Regina as his own daughter.) When Mrs. Alving spies Oswald embracing Regina in the dining room, she is horrified by memories of Captain Alving and Regina’s mother. Manders advises her to continue to hide the truth — she has spent years writing letters to Oswald, giving him an idealized image of his father. How, then, can she reveal the facts now?

Mrs. Alving appears, at first, to be a strong, assertive Ibsen heroine. But was it honorable for her to hide the truth from her child? And is he really the “beloved son” that she proclaims? She sent him to boarding school with the noble intention of keeping him away from his corrupt father; but couldn’t she have gone to visit him, even once? It’s a challenging role, and though Petersen captured Mrs. Alving’s dignity and compassion, she was not quite so successful in communicating her complexity.

Peakes transformed the pastor from a villain to a complicated man who believes he’s doing the right thing. DeLaurier was both funny and touching in his portrayal of the conniving opportunist Engstrand. Conallen was amazing as the afflicted Oswald, who fears a descent into insanity even more than he fears death. Tuomanen was appealing as the beguiling Regina.

This play, despite its timeliness, is rarely performed. (The most recent Broadway revival, in 1982, starred Kevin Spacey, in his Broadway debut, as Oswald.) See it now while you have the chance.