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<b>by Henrik Ibsen, directed by Diana Leblanc
Stratford Festival, Tom Patterson Theatre, Stratford
August 12-September 23, 2006
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"Relevant Revenants"
To commemorate the 100th anniversary of his death, both the Stratford and the Shaw Festivals are presenting works by Henrik Ibsen, often called the father of modern drama. At the Shaw is the less often seen “Rosmersholm” of 1886. Stratford has just opened its production of the more often revived “Ghosts” of 1881. “Ghosts” is a much more accessible work than the enigmatic “Rosmersholm” and Stratford uses a much more straightforward adaptation than the gratingly modern version used at the Shaw. Nevertheless, for all its flaws, it is the Shaw’s “Rosmersholm” (reviewed above) that creates more tension and moves to a more devastating conclusion.
In its day “Ghosts” was Ibsen’s most controversial play. Inherited sexually transmitted disease, incest and euthanasia are all themes that make this play more relevant than ever especially given the presence of a conservative Christian minister who believes such topics should not even be discussed much less dealt with in any practical way. In its day the play was so scandalous that when it was first published booksellers refused to stock it and theatres in Scandinavia refused to stage it. Therefore, strangely enough, the play’s first performance took place in Chicago in Norwegian in 1882. The Stratford production uses the Richard Harris’s lightly modernized version of J. Basil Cowlishaw’s translation, which calls far less attention to itself than Neil Munro’s heavily updated version of Ibsen’s text for the Shaw.
As is often his way Ibsen creates resonance by juxtaposing two simple plots that are parallel bur opposite to each other. In the subplot the supposedly reformed alcoholic carpenter Jakob Engstrand wants his daughter Regina, a maid in Mrs. Alving’s household, to return to him because he wants to start a refuge for wayward mariners. In the main plot Oswald, a painter, has returned to live with his mother Mrs. Alving after many years abroad in Paris. Pastor Manders, spiritual advisor to both Engstrand and Mrs. Alving, has arrived to dedicate an orphanage that Mrs. Alving has built to the memory of her husband. Despite appearances, this is not a picture of happiness. Regina hates her father and refuses to leave Mrs. Alving. Mrs. Alving hated her husband and his constant sexual straying. She is building the orphanage so that something good might come from all the evil he committed. Oswald has returned home because he is seriously ill and knows he will soon not be able to care for himself. When Mrs. Alving hears Oswald flirting with Regina, she sees the “ghosts” of the past, her husband flirting with their former maid, and knows she must act to stop him.
The glory of Stratford’s production is the performance of Martha Henry as Mrs. Alving. This character is sometimes portrayed as an overprotective mother, but as the text and Henry’s performance makes clear, Mrs. Alving is now so solicitous toward Oswald in a vain attempt to make up for the years when she sent him away as a boy and later encouraged him to go abroad. She tries to convince Oswald and herself that she was a good mother although she hesitates to say why that involved keeping him away from home for so long. In fact, she was attempting to insure that Oswald was influenced as little as possible by his abominable father. Henry’s voice drips with irony when she speaks with Pastor Manders, whose every command she followed even though they only brought her years of misery. Henry shows us a woman who has become independent and intellectually inquisitive since she has learned that the Pastor’s conventional morality is too narrow to encompass reality as she has experienced it.
As Pastor Manders, Peter Donaldson gives a straightforward performance, but ultimately he never suggests how so unworldly a person and one with such a black-and-white view of the world could possibly have had such power over so strong a person as Mrs. Alving. In fact, he still does have enough power over to convince her not to insure the orphanage she has built--a fact, given his general weakness, that simply doesn’t ring true. In part, this imbalance between Manders and Mrs. Alving is the fault of director Diana Leblanc, who should make it clear that their struggle for dominance is what drives the drama and that that struggle only works if both parties bear equal weight.
Gary Reineke gives a fine performance as Jakob Engstrand. He deftly communicates beneath the pitiful Engstrand’s whining, subservient tone a wiliness in looking out for any opportunity to get what he wants. Adrienne Gould is also very fine as Regina, puffed up by dreams beyond her station so that, like her father, insolence lies very close beneath surface servility. After Mrs. Alving reveals a key secret to her at the end, Gould unfortunately blusters so much that her reaction is not as clear as it should be. As for Mrs. Alving’s cherished son Oswald, newcomer Brian Hamman simply looks and acts too hale and hearty for someone suffering from tertiary syphilis. His illness should be plain from the very start to make the onset of further symptoms at the end of the play more believable and to make it clearer that Mrs. Alving is intentionally blinding herself to the reality of his condition.
Leblanc, who took over the project when Stephen Ouimette withdrew, makes the mistake of having Mrs. Alving always appear right and her opponents, especially Pastor Manders, always appear wrong. The relation between the two is more complicated than that. Indeed, Mrs. Alving’s blindness to Oswald’s conditionn now should parallel Mander’s blindness towards Mr. Alving’s true nature in the past. As Oswald, Hamman clearly needs more direction than he received to make his character plausible. In general, what is missing is the sense that the characters’ choices inevitably propel them toward their doom, a feeling that Neil Munro so forcefully sustains in “Rosmersholm”. Unlike Munro’s dénouement, made all the more devastating through restraint, Leblanc errs on the side of melodrama in shaping the play’s final moments. Mrs. Alving should be paralyzed with horror and indecision, as Ibsen states in his stage directions, rather than moving about in doubtful action.
Though the Tom Patterson Theatre is the most fitting stage at Stratford for this play, Charlotte Dean’s design gives the Alving house such a spacious feel it hardly creates the sense of claustrophobia necessary as Mrs. Alving’s world, collapses. This task falls mainly to Bonnie Beecher’s lighting that pervades the large space with an aura of gloom and to Todd Charlton’s highly realistic soundscape of constant rain.
Ibsen’s “Ghosts” is a central work in the development of modern drama and the role of Mrs. Alving is a wonderful showcase for Martha Henry’s talents. Despite the production’s various flaws, these provide the overriding reasons to see a play that has only grown more relevant with the passage of time.
©Christopher Hoile
Note: This review is a <i>Stage Door</i> exclusive.
Photo: Peter Donaldson, Adrienne Gould, Martha Henry and Brian Hamman. ©David Hou.
<b>2006-09-02</b>
<b>Ghosts</b>