Star Tribune: A complex, deeply rewarding ‘Ghosts’
“Ghosts” appears to be straightforward. Five characters in a parlor, with two chairs and two benches, talk at each other for two hours. But in the ethereal mist of ideas, Henrik Ibsen makes this early example of modern drama thick with meaning.
Director Craig Johnson has adapted “Ghosts” for Theatre in the Round and staged it with efficient dispatch, finding in this daunting pile of words and stasis a resonant and haunting chord. Ibsen, in high moral dudgeon, swipes at the bourgeosie’s hypocrisy, the corroding chancre of secretiveness, mendacity and prodigality. It is a searing tragedy that continues to unfold days after we leave the theater.
Ibsen sets his play in the country estate of Helen Alving, who has reason to celebrate: Her son, Oswald, has returned from an artistic sojourn in Paris, and an orphanage named for her late husband will be dedicated shortly. Alving, played with icy confidence by Muriel Bonertz at the start, welcomes Pastor Manders into her home, for he will speak at the ceremony.
As the conversation proceeds, Ibsen takes his cudgel against two-faced morality. Manders is a facile man full of righteous bluster — a perfect type of today’s “Family Values” crowd — but slippery when confronted in crisis. David Coral gives a fine characterization with bluff pretense, though one perhaps too straightforward.
As often happens in Ibsen, the dramatic key is a secret, which he uses to erode the bonhomie. Alving learns that repression cannot safeguard her son from his old man’s iniquity. Oswald, in a thoughtful performance by Wade Vaughn, has a ramrod carriage masking a wounded soul. His early optimism gives way to desperation as we learn that his father has transmitted syphilis to him. This development unravels Alving and she is left to wrestle with the eternal ghosts — now of her husband and her son.
Two other players skirt the edges of this drama. Thom Pinault is a duplicitous carpenter who shares the same innocent menace as Manders. Pinault is wistful as he hides a conniving spirit. Mo Perry plays the Alvings’ maid (who figures in the denouement; Ibsen leaves no one untouched) with a cool economical wariness.
Johnson creates an eerie world, with lighting help from Deborah Tallen and striking sound design by Lynn Musgrave. There are moments when this indeed feels like a ghost story, as mother and son feel the specter of Capt. Alving. The experience is rich and challenging.
REVIEW
GHOSTS
What: By Henrik Ibsen. Directed and adapted by Craig Johnson.
When: 8 p.m. Fri.-Sat.; 7 p.m. Sun. (2 p.m. on Jan. 29). Ends Jan. 29.
Where: Theatre in the Round, 245 Cedar Av. S., Mpls.
Review: This piece will make you work, but the reward is a rich and haunting meditation on hypocrisy and repression.
Tickets: $20. 612-333-3010 or www.theatreinthe round.org.
Graydon Royce ? 612-673-7299