Review by Carol Rocamora…
A blast of icy Nordic wind is blowing through the Mitzi E. Newhouse Theater at Lincoln Center. Ghosts, Henrik Ibsen’s formidable classic (1881), is receiving a riveting revival under Jack O’Brien’s direction, featuring a stellar cast whose passion cuts through that Nordic chill, as it tells a fearful tale of a family in crisis.
In Ghosts, Mrs. Alving (Lily Rabe), the family matriarch, is visited by her pastor (Billy Crudup) on the remote island off the coast of Norway where she lives, ostensibly to sign the papers for the orphanage she has built in honor of her late husband. In that visit, key issues of past and present are revealed, relating to Mrs. Alving’s late husband (a drunk and an adulterer) and the Pastor, to whom she sought refuge from her destructive marriage (a romance between the Pastor and Mrs. Alving is implied). The Pastor ultimately sent her back to her husband on moral grounds, to honor her marriage vows and avoid scandal.
A parallel drama is brewing between Engstrand (Hamish Linklater), a local carpenter whose daughter Regina (Ella Beatty) is Mrs. Alving’s housemaid. The family drama intensifies when Mrs. Alving’s son Oswald (Levon Hawke) returns from Paris to stay with mother, and reveals he has a terminal disease, begging her to care for him in his decline and if necessary, to help him die rather to suffer.
All these intense, intricate interactions come to a head when two events occur. First, a fire burns down the newly built orphanage on the night before its dedication. Second, the true identity of Regina (with whom Oswald has fallen in love) is revealed as his half -sister (Captain Alving is father to both).
As in his other great works, Ibsen is writing a scathing attack on the hypocrisy of 19th century Norwegian morality – both religious and societal. Pastor Manders is not the friend to Mrs. Alving that he professes to be – as evidenced in his insistence that she stay in a destructive marriage and his advice that she needn’t take out fire insurance on the orphanage. Both attitudes are based on Manders’s slavish devotion to a false morality and to appearances (the insurance would imply that Mrs. Alving has no faith in God, he posits).
The illness of Oswald is the illness of Norwegian society – and its cause is the “sins of the father” which are visited upon the sons – in this case, the parents upon the children. Captain Alving has transmitted a fatal disease to his son; Regina’s mother falsely claimed that Engstrand was the father of her illegitimate child.
Indeed, “icy passion” is the paradox of Ibsen’s melodramas – and the ensemble plays it beautifully. Lily Rabe is a stately Mrs. Alving, whose fierce love for her son is all-consuming. Billy Crudup plays the Pastor’s pontifications to the point of farce. Hamish Linklater’s passionate Engstrand is the one truly moral character, as evidenced in his desire to build a hostel for suffering sailors. Ella Beatty creates a passionate proto-feminist role in her portrayal of Regina, who in the end takes control of her own destiny.
In a thrilling professional debut, Levon Hawke gives a magnetic performance as the young Oswald. Emaciated and frail from his increasing illness, he nonetheless exudes a power and a confidence that are charismatic. Unlike the character he plays, Hawke’s own inheritance is mighty (his natural parents are actors Ethan Hawke and Uma Thurman), and he does them proud. Levon Hawke’s arrival on the New York stage is a truly exciting event, promising a great future.
A distinguished director at Lincoln Center Theatre for decades, O’Brien delivers this new version of Ghosts by Mark O’Rowe with a sure hand. It’s a handsome production, with a stately set by John Lee Beatty and impressive lighting by Japhy Weideman (notably in the fire scene).
One distracting directorial stroke: The performance begins with the five actors entering the stage with bright green scripts. They start to read from them twice before they put them down and launch into the full dramatization of Ibsen’s class. That meta moment occurs at the end, too, when – after Ibsen’s traumatic, tragic ending – the actors reenter with those scripts, toss them dismissively on the large table, and exit.
My question: Why was it necessary to frame this classic with a metatheatrical comment? A revival of Ibsen’s immortal Ghosts needs neither an introduction nor a justification to make it urgent and relevant. The play speaks for itself.
Ghosts, by Henrik Ibsen, in a new version by Mark O’Rowe, at the Mitzi Newhouse, Lincoln Center Theater, through April 26.
Photos: Jeremy Daniel
