Shining Hattie lights up gloomy Ibsen
Ghosts Sam Wanamaker Playhouse, London Until January 28, 1hr 40mins 1979 Finborough Theatre, London Until January 27, 1hr 20mins
The Ibsen classic Ghosts has everything: prostitution and marital infidelity, accidental incest (the couple didn’t know they were related), venereal disease and euthanasia. Today this might be your regular soap fare, but you do wonder what the good burghers of Oslo made of it when it was first staged there in 1883.
The Norwegian playwright’s works often concern chickens coming home to roost and free spirits struggling in an oppressive and hypocritical society. Ghosts can seem heavy-handed given Ibsen’s fatalism and the doomed nature of the characters, who all have something to hide.
Adaptor and director Joe HillGibbins, though, has sucked out the declamatory stuff and gone for a more low-key and intense version, set in a claustrophobic womb of mirrors, red fur carpet and candlelight that is so suited to this intimate venue.
The central Mrs Alving is clearly beset by predatory males, not least the smarmy and clearly dodgy pastor Manders (a fine Paul Hilton), who is pressuring her over a new orphanage in memory of Captain Alving, the dissolute husband with whom she stayed to protect her son.
Said son, the liberal Osvald, now returns home from Paris, much to his mum’s delight (yes, their relationship is a smidge too close). It transpires, to his mother’s gutwrenching horror, that Osvald has syphilis as a result of his father’s impropriety, and Regine, the maid he has had sexual relations with, is also the illegitimate progeny of Captain Alving.
All very melodramatic, but here it’s played like a psychological thriller, and even has a few laughs. Mrs Alving – a terrific, simmering, seething Hattie Morahan – warns her son against the girl, understatedly: ‘Regine has her flaws.’ Underlined.
A refreshing and darkly absorbing take on a classic. I only wish that the literal darkness didn’t obscure many of the actors’ facial expressions from where I was sitting.
Asked what they know about Canadian politics, most people would come up with one name: Trudeau. Some because of current PM Justin Trudeau, many because of his father Pierre, who held the same position twice, over 15 years.
Canadian Michael Healey’s dense and hectic play, 1979, certainly bombards those unfamiliar with his country’s political history with plenty more information and statistics in its 80-minute running time – sometimes from all sides in complex, rapid-fire dialogue as well as brain-sapping statistics and background info that flash up on a screen behind the players at the same time.
At the centre of it all is the corduroy-suited Joe Clark (Joseph May), a mild-mannered but highly principled, if naive, politician who was PM for less than a year and is here grappling – and he ultimately failed, allowing the return of Trudeau – to stay in power as chaotic factions and interested parties manoeuvre around him.
Many issues are discussed – even Margaret Thatcher for her election success and ability to appeal to the electorate in 1979 – most of which will be unfamiliar to audiences here. The production might be more illuminating if it all weren’t so wordy and relentless.
It didn’t get my vote.