2008<\/p>\n
Ghosts
\nby Henrik Ibsen
\nAdaptation by Nicki Bloom<\/p>\n
State Theatre Company of South Australia
\nDunstan Playhouse, Adelaide Festival Centre.
\nOctober 13, 2008. Tickets: $21.70 – $51.70.
\nBookings BASS 131 246
\nUntil October 25.<\/p>\n
In a letter, in June 1882, Henrik Ibsen declared – \u201cI had to write Ghosts: I couldn\u2019t stop at A Doll\u2019s House: after Nora, I had to create Mrs Alving.\u201d Ibsen, ever the probing questioner of received opinions, showed us Nora leaving her doll house before her adult life had properly begun, with the older Mrs Alving he examines a blighted life of misplaced duty, betrayed trust and inter-generational tragedy.<\/p>\n
The ghosts in Ibsen\u2019s play go bump, not in the night, but in the mind and brain . In her famous speech to Pastor Manders, Mrs Alving describes the ghosts as \u201call kinds of dead ideas, and all sorts of old and obsolete beliefs. They are not alive in us but remain in us nonetheless, and we can never rid ourselves of them.\u201d These ghosts also take the sinister form of congenital syphilis, the \u201csins of the fathers\u201d bestowed on her dying son Oswald, innocent victim of his father\u2019s covert vice. <\/p>\n
Transfering Ibsen\u2019s bold and confronting plays from the 19th century to the present stage is always a challenge. Nora, the recent audacious modernization of A Doll\u2019s House by Thomas Ostermeier for the Berlin Schaubuhne company made a strong impact at the 2006 Adelaide Festival. And with this State Theatre production, in similar vein, but with far more fidelity to the details of the text, director Geordie Brookman has made a very creditable job of keeping the themes and conflicts of the play vivid and current. <\/p>\n
Nicki Bloom\u2019s text, in many ways still discernibly close to translations such as Michael Meyer\u2019s, has its deliberate anachronistic jolts with words like \u201cup-front\u201d and \u201cmedia\u201d (and I wonder whether Regina Engstrand\u2019s F-word is more a stunt than a coup du theatre) but the move to directness and essentials is an admirable one. Victoria Lamb\u2019s striking glass and iron set and apt costumes are also important for this sense of connection, blending the visual accents of Edvard Munch with the more gothic aspects of contemporary design. Dressing Manders, not as a stern Victorian cleric, but in the casual jeans and jacket of an outer suburban Australian evangelist, for instance, makes him a very believable purveyor of today\u2019s ghosts. <\/p>\n
The cast is evenly excellent – Alice Darling as the restless Regina, Brendan Rock convincingly insidious as Jakob, and Christopher Pitman as the confused, hypocritical and, ultimately, ruthless Manders. But it is Nathan O\u2019Keefe\u2019s tortured and desperate Oswald and the range and intelligence of Heather Mitchell\u2019s outstanding portrayal of Mrs Alving which make Geordie Brookman\u2019s intrepid production such an impressive success. <\/p>\n
\u201cThings that go bump in the mind\u201d The Australian, October 17, 2008, p.10<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
2008 Ghosts by Henrik Ibsen Adaptation by Nicki Bloom State Theatre Company of South Australia Dunstan Playhouse, Adelaide Festival Centre. October 13, 2008. Tickets: $21.70 – $51.70. Bookings BASS 131 246 Until October 25. In a letter, in June 1882, Henrik Ibsen declared – \u201cI had to write Ghosts: I couldn\u2019t stop at A Doll\u2019s House: after Nora, I had to create Mrs Alving.\u201d Ibsen, ever the probing questioner of received opinions, showed us Nora leaving her doll house before […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,14,13],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-656","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-archive","category-state-theatre-company","category-theatre"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/murraybramwell.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/656","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/murraybramwell.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/murraybramwell.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/murraybramwell.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/murraybramwell.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=656"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/murraybramwell.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/656\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":970,"href":"https:\/\/murraybramwell.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/656\/revisions\/970"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/murraybramwell.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=656"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/murraybramwell.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=656"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/murraybramwell.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=656"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}