Ghosts - Sam Wanamaker Playhouse

I’m seeing it but only because the running time is usually about 1:40 which is all I could endure on those terrible seats. Greg Hicks is one of my absolute favourites.

I’ll do you one better

“adapted by Joe Hill-Gibbs”

😳

I really enjoyed this tonight.

It's a mesmerising candlelit version of Ibsen's "Ghosts" that plays at 1 hour 40 minutes straight through without an interval, much as the Lesley Manville version did at the Almeida.

It's a worthy ten year tribute to the Venue too, with it's run marking ten years since the opening Gemma Arterton "Duchess of Malfi," utilising candles in a way that is as significant to this production as they were to that Premiere production.

Greg Hicks and Stuart Thompson bring some much needed counterbalancing earthiness to an otherwise dreamily hypnotic show.

Some spoilers follow. . .

You know those stylish movies, often involving Scorsese or Welles or Hitchcock, where the shot just keeps on going without cutting away, so the world of the movie feels all-encompassing? Well, Joe Hill-Gibbins, in his script and in his direction, delivers the theatrical version of that, whereby one scene bleeds into the next without a decisive marking of the end of scenes, characters joining and disappearing from the conversation seamlessly.

Significantly, Hill-Gibbins chooses to keep one character, Stuart Thompson's Osvald permanently present, keeping the most-trapped character trapped, on the plush carpet set beneath the crepuscular candlelight.

The sacrifice is that we don't get the dum-dum-dum slap at the end of scenes. But the benefit is that the world closes in on Osvald's character in a more caged and claustrophobic way than you would normally experience with this play.

Like in Malfi ten years ago, the candles are lit and squelched judiciously to match the drama (although they don't drip all over the audience any more as they did on me at the first preview of Malfi lol).

It was great to see Hattie Morahan back doing Ibsen after the incredible Young Vic Dollhouse, also about a decade ago. As Mrs. Alving, Osvald's scandalously liberal mother, she is initially dignified and restrained, but later movingly impassioned and desperate as the plot ties her in knots.

The way the script and direction bleed one scene into the next, with characters unable to break from the inexorable movement of the plot in such a contained dimly lit space, makes for a hypnotic and mesmerising experience, but its a relief that Greg Hicks, in particular, is so earthy and grounded, bringing in a breath of the air of an outside world into this claustrophobic atmosphere.

Stuart Thompson's Osvald is also earthy, staccato and breathy, but more tragically so, as he is doomed never to leave the stage.

All in all, this is a hypnotically effective version of "Ghosts," that sacrifices some moments of pithy aftermath to create a mesmerising, memorable and unique whole.

4 stars from me.

I’m seeing it too. I didn’t much like the Richard Eyre/Lesley Manville production, far too melodramatic for me. I did like the Katie Mitchell production which was understated and impeccably cast with Simon Russell-Beale in the lead.

A potentially good cast thrown to the wolves in a self-indulgent production that plasters early C21st sensibilities all over these C19th characters and their world; while cutting it to 95 mins drives a train through Ibsen's carefully manufactured structure, robbing the play of its slowly accumulated force and impact, and reducing the last 20 mins or so (which are tricky to handle at the best of times) to a sequence of soap-like revelations and climaxes. The trouser-less Osvald becomes such a whiny Mummy's boy (he refers to her as "Mummy" throughout) that it becomes difficult to care about him, and Manders SO weaselly and hypocritical that his character loses any counterbalancing probity. Far from being understated (as in Katie Mitchell above) every emotion is amplified and wildly semaphored. Paul Hilton and the great Hattie Morahan do their best, but deserve much better; while the indestructible Gregg Hicks hardly seems to have aged since his days at the NT 40+ years ago. A serious misfire.

You may be right (though the vogue these days does seem to be for "Ibsen-lite"), perhaps it just felt really rushed to me compared with several previous productions...

Ahhh I ended up getting a ticket in the TKTS NY Sale. Thanks for sharing this though!