There have been times when I have seen an emotionally
challenging play which left me physically affected when the final curtain fell,
only to be jarred back to reality by the buoyant cast taking their (well
deserved) bows. Not so in Richard Eyre’s Ghosts at the Almeida Theatre, London.
Despite the effusive applause and even, in some quarters, standing ovations,
the five members of this cast were sombre, sober and humble, clearly exhausted
and perhaps drained by the emotional realism of their performances. They all
had cause to be tired, the play runs for 90 minutes without an interval and
from the very opening scene the performance is full of energy. This play, which
revolves around the widowed Lady of the house Helene Alving (Lesley Manville), consists
mostly of verbal sparring between two or three characters at a time. Only towards
the end is there a dramatic event and even this occurs off stage so the actors
are required to keep the audience involved throughout all the tragic
revelations.
The actors are aided by Tim Hatley’s beautiful and cleverly
layered set design. Whilst the scenes of the play are all set in Helene’s parlour,
we can see through the back wall of this room into the next, (the dining room).
This serves the narrative in several ways. It draws us in more intimately but
also adds a sense of voyeurism, a sense that we are spying on private conversations.
As we learn that for Helene the house is full of ghosts, the ghost of her
husband’s memory, ghosts of her life as it might have been had she made
different choices, the half seen room takes on the symbolism of a ghost itself.
This is used to great effect when Helene and Pastor Manders (played by Will
Keen), occupying the immediate and solid parlour, discuss the past whilst the
youthful Regina Engstrand (Charlene McKenna) and Oswald Alving (Jack Lowden)
are in the pale and indistinct dining room behind. Intriguingly the main
entrance to the house was also located in the back wall of the dining room,
forcing all those that entered the house to pass through a ghostly phase before
solidifying upon entering the parlour.
Lesley Manville’s portrayal of Helene is natural and
consistent throughout. She maintains the strength and charm that is at the
heart of Helene even whilst revealing her vulnerability and regrets. At points
where it might have been easy to lazily slip into a stereotypically hysterical
or weak woman, she never succumbs, holding her head high and dominating the
room. It is thanks to Lesley’s performance that the true tragedy of this
interpretation is the realisation of Helene’s that the two men she loves, and
lives for, don’t love her. One of these men, the Pastor, has a wholly
unlikeable superior manner which makes it difficult to imagine how he could
have captured Helene’s heart in their youth. Although his own vulnerabilities
are shown in the course of the play I never felt any sympathy nor empathy for
him. There was, for me, a distinction between the Pastor and the other characters.
Helene, Regina, Oswald and even Regina’s father Jacob (Brian McCardie), all
undergo a journey and their lives are substantially altered by the end. However,
the Pastor goes through no alteration. Even Regina’s father, an undoubtable
rogue whose motivation throughout is his own pursuit of money and happiness is
more likeable because he seems to have accepted and embraced his own faults.
The Pastor never seems happy and refuses to examine his own choices. Will Keen
plays the Pastor as a weasel of a man that ends the play as much a moralising coward
as he seemed at the start, preoccupied with soliciting public opinion rather
than following his own intelligent judgement.
The final word must go to the junior members of the cast, Charlene
McKenna and Jack Lowden. Both portrayed their difficult characters with skill.
Jack Lowden, playing Helene’s son, had the extremely challenging task of
performing rapid physical deterioration on stage at the end of the play. By
playing Oswald as restless, quietly powerful and full of trapped energy
throughout, he made this transition all the more distressing and I certainly
felt my own emotions all the more caught up with Helene’s. Regina’s transition
was harsher, heralding the end of hope. Charlene McKenna played her exactly as
I imagine Ibsen wrote her, awake to all the possibilities for joy in life,
clever and determined. Her realisation that the woman she admired and revered
(Helene) and the man she thought worthy of her love (Oswald) were actually using
her, is shortly followed by her leaving. Charlene is so watchable that I wanted
her back again as soon as she left and not just to delay the inevitably sad
ending.
This is an exposition of human fallibility but thanks to
skilled performances, especially from the two women, I could wipe away my budding
tears and join in the applause of my fellow audience members with gusto,
knowing that the past is unchangeable but the future is ours to shape. I know I
will remember this performance whenever I sit down to Ibsen again, as Richard
Eyre has delivered a version of Ghosts that does indeed haunt.
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