Family Life Haunted by Ghosts

Ghosts

Directed by Polly Hogan

At the Lyric Stage, Copley Square

Through February 9

Henrik Ibsen wrote his three-act play, Ghosts, in response to the critical furor engendered by his unabashedly pro-feminist play, A Doll's House. Instead of depicting a woman who abandons a condescending husband, Ghosts portrays a resolute female protagonist who suffers the after-effects of loveless marriage.

The plot explores how the sins of the fathers are transplanted to sons and how past events recycle. Although the art that one generation deems revolutionary may seem banal to the next, the liberal themes of Ghosts shock modern audiences like liberal themes in the Victorian era shocked audiences then.

No set barriers separate the audience from the stage where Mrs. Alving (Miriam Varon) strives to nullify the memory and inheritance of a horrifying past. Mrs. Alving is a widow with the inappropriate accent of an Eastern European immigrant, but Varon delivers a capable and accomplished performance--which she does in six languages. Mrs. Alving occupies herself with revolutionary books (at least they were in 1890s Norway) which have led her to abandon the constraints of religious superstition and accepted mores.

Her twenty-six-year-old son, Oswald Alving (Brent Blair), recently returned home from living in Paris, because "even an artist needs rest." Blair delivers a respectable, if not predictable, performance of a boy who attended French boarding schools as a child and spent his entire life away from his Norwegian home.

His mother's single connection with him throughout that period was frequent epistles that contained false reports of his beneficent father--that is, until his untimely death. Oswald's indefinite home stay opens a veritable Pandora's box of ghosts from the past, despite Mrs. Alving's maneuverings.

Meanwhile, Pastor Manders (Ron Ritchell) arrives at the Alving home to prepare for the christening of the Captain Alving Memorial Orphanage. Ritchell convincingly plays a character who condemns Mrs. Alving's books on grounds that they are improper--although he has not read them.

Mrs. Alving's books and her underlying individuality conflict with the pastor's faith in the divine; he considers the yoke of duty as the primary characteristic for a wife and refuses even to listen to her contrary opinions.

Sundry Victorian furnishings fill the small stage, but director Polly Hogan exploits it by having the actors traverse across and around it. During a scene when Manders remarks about the resemblance between father and son, he, Oswald, and a portrait of Mr. Alving fall into line to highlight that Oswald has inherited the countenance of his sire. Contrarily, his mother had hoped that her son would inherit nothing from a father who led a dissolute life.

Regina Engstrand (Donna Manley) holds the same position--housekeeper for Mrs. Alving--that her own mother did before her death. The education and refinement she has culled from living in this cosmopolitan home conflicts with the behavior of her offensive step-father, Jacob (Harry Cooper). He frequently reminds his daughter about the duty a child owes a father, although this is some what muffled beneath his deliberately garbled gruffness.

Despite his unclear speech, Cooper brilliantly portrays Mr. Engstrand as a crotchety, aged carpenter with every-moving eyebrows, a lame leg, and discomfited facial expressions. Although by he is her father, Engstrand's ill-mannered ways and frequent machinations lead Regina to despise him.

Just as Mr. Engstrand plagues his daughter, Mrs. Alving seems incapable of ridding herself of the ghosts that haunt her. Like entropy, their lives, despite conscientious planning, degenerate into turmoil.

The idea of women's independence, questioning the bond between parent and child and sexual permissiveness were rather risque themes for Ibsen's original audience. They are not so startling today, but his eternal, humanistic messages, like themes in all great works of art, maintain immediacy over time.

The actors fail to deliver an emotionally gripping performance, although the conclusion is startling.