GHOSTS
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They were perfectly right to be frightened. Ibsen made Ghosts the occasion for an attack on everything hypocritical, everything repressive, everything bigoted, everything mean and dark and joyless—that is to say, everything sacred—in bourgeois society. The Danish playwright Erik Bogh knew what he was up against, if not what he was talking about, when, according to Zesmer, he characterized Ghosts as “a repulsive pathological phenomenon which, by undermining the morality of our social order, threatens its foundations.”
You want a vindication of the rights of women? See Ghosts. You want rhapsodic defenses of free thought and free love? See Ghosts. You want digs at pious jerks? Visions of a corrupt patriarchy? Class war? Syphilis? Mercy killing? You want a discussion of the theology of fire insurance? You know where to go.
Confronted with Ibsen’s fervent but schematic script, director Bernard Hopkins has for some reason chosen to throw out the fervor and play up the schematics. There’s not a bit of energy here, but plenty of foreshadowing. Heavy, heavy foreshadowing. Foreshadows over foreshadows. Every significant line is underlined and circled in red. Someone asks a servant girl why she’s so interested in her young master’s welfare and she falls backward, halfway across the room, so we’ll know she’s in love with him; Mrs. Alving says her son, Osvald, takes after her and then turns to give the audience a big look, so we’ll know there’s more here than meets the eye.
Art accompanying story in printed newspaper (not available in this archive): photo/David Sutton.
