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Micky Joe
So here's what we're going to do. We're going to take this originally controversial and now deeply celebrated classic Ibsen play. We're going to modernize it. We're going to make it current, we're going to make it topical, we're going to make it sexy. How are we going to do that? Well, I'm glad you asked, because what about this play speaks to 2025 society more than just leaning into all of the incest stuff? I'm not even kidding a little bit. Oh my God. Hey, welcome back to my theatre themed YouTube channel. Or hello to you if you are listening on podcast platforms. My name is Micky Joe and I am obsessed with all things theatre theatre. I am also a professional theatre critic and a content creator here on social media and I recently headed to the Lyric Hammersmith here in London to see Gary Owen's new adaptation of the Henrik Ibsen play Ghosts. This is Gary Owen, the playwright, once again teaming up with director Rachel O. Riordan at the same venue. Not too long ago I saw a production of their play together, Iphigenia in Splot, which was a really blistering modern adaptation of ancient Greek tragedy. And this production, though its title makes it a little less obvious, is the same context. This is a new, new adaptation of Ghosts that doesn't just translate the piece, it infuses it with current ideas and topical themes, which we're going to talk about in today's full review. I'm going to let you know what I thought of this very interesting piece of theater. Of course, if you have also been to see Ghosts already at the Lyric Hammersmith, I would love to know what you thought of it in the comments section because I think this one in particular is such a great springboard for conversation. So let me know what your thoughts were and if you enjoy listening to mine. Make sure that you are subscribed on YouTube with the notifications turned on or following me on podcast platforms. And since I have a live show in London coming up this weekend, I also should point out if you really enjoy listening to me talk, then you can hear a lot more of it on Sunday 20 April at the Phoenix Arts Club in London when I will be performing Mickey Jo Theatre Live, interviewing a handful of guest actors and creatives. You can get tickets in person or via live stream. There's a link to that in the description of this video. Plug aside. Let's carry on and talk about Ghosts. Okay, so let's begin by talking about the original Henrik Ibsen play, which I have to confess, I have only seen the once, many years ago, fairly early in my theatre going career. The thing that made me laugh a little about this play is it kind of puts the idea of Chekhov's gun to shame. The notion that some big momentous event will be foreshadowed in the text, because ghosts, the original version at least, takes that to the extreme. A widow named Mrs. Alving is having an orphanage built. She is helping to fund the building of an orphanage in her late husband's memory, despite the fact that, as she reveals during the first act of the play, he was a dreadful, dreadful man. She is warned by a man of the Lord not to insure the orphanage because this would indicate that, you know, it's inherently blasphemous that she doesn't believe that God is watching over the orphanage and protecting it. And there's a lot of conversation around the idea of, like, but what if it were to burn down? Oh my God, look, the orphanage is burning down. Then later in the second act, another hefty spoiler here, but we're going to have to talk about it, to talk about this adaptation. Her son reveals to her that he has, I believe, genetically inherited syphilis, which, you know, not great. And he has been assured that at some point on the horizon his brain is going to almost entirely deteriorate. And again, the second that he alludes to this, it happens there and then. And in the final moments of the play, Mrs. Alving has to decide whether or not to euthanize her son per his prior request. Lots going on, lots that we're dealing with, the prevailing theme of which is the inability to escape the ghosts of the past. All of which allows for really interesting conversations around how you model modernized this play. And I was so excited about the premise because, like I said, Iphigenia and Splot was such a blistering and necessary and urgent piece of theatre. And those are some of my favorite adjectives. I love when something really speaks to the now. I like reviving classics as they are, but I agree with Gary Owen that, you know, it'll never be quite as compelling as recontextualizing something in a modern sense. Because a lot of the, the tension in the original version of Ghosts hinges on the devast of ruin. And, you know, what will happen to the family name if the truth about the late Mr. Alving ever actually gets out. And the notion of ruin doesn't really speak to us in 2025. But you know, what does cancel culture? So that's one of the Ways in which the story gets adapted. In the new version of ghosts, the milfy Mrs. Alving is meeting with an old flame who has now become a lawyer. The two of them have been working together in order to build and fund and open a hospital children. And while my memory of Ibsen's ghosts is likely falling a little short here, I dare say that the behaviors of the captain that are revealed in the first act of the play have also been updated to be a little more scandalous and a little more dreadful. He is no longer simply an adulterer, but he is now the subject of allegations of sexual encounters, including, you know, abuse of power dynamics and non consent. And there are many similarities between this new version of the piece and the original. There are also some really striking differences. Robert the lawyer is very, very anti religious. A far cry from the character who he is replacing in Ibsen's version. The notion of him trying to convince her not to insure the orphanage sort of shifts here because from Robert's perspective, he isn't doing anything willfully nefarious. But insurance is invoked in the text, if only as a little bit of a wink. Because even with more yet to come to light, there is an early conversation about the idea of removing her husband's name from the charitable trust that would fund the hospital and the doing so would represent, and I quote, some kind of insurance. The other component of the story here is a local man named Jacob, who is the adoptive father of a young woman named Reggie, who works in the household of the Alvings and has developed a very close relationship. A romantic relationship, we soon find out, with Mrs. Alving's young son Oz, who in this is an out of work actor with an extravagant personality whose flair for the dramatics is a compensation for a lifelong lack of affection that he only really feels when he is beginning a romantic relationship with Reggie. When the two of them are flirting, when the two of them are drinking wine together, when the two of them are heading into the next room to go and do the thing that comes after that. The problem with all of this is in the meantime we find out that they are actually half siblings. Because Reggie's real father, you guessed it, is the philandering Captain Alvin, who had a sexual relationship with her mother when she was Oz's nanny in the house. A relationship that may or may not have been consensual. There's a lot of confusing conversations around this. I think deliberately, we're not really meant to have a sure sense of it. Oz and Reggie find out just before the interval in any case, that their relationship is doomed and quite possibly illegal because the two of them are genetically related half siblings. I would say we've all been there, but I really hope that we haven't. And aside from a few remaining links to the original text, like Robert in his disgust about all of this, heading down to the newly built hospital and briefly contemplating trying to burn it to the ground, but then ultimately, ultimately not being able to, and Oz trying to convince his mother to permit him to end his life when he discovers that the circumstances of his birth may not have been a consensual, happy relationship. Aside from those, it does deviate largely from the themes and the ideas of Ibsen's original, and it does focus very much on this incestuous relationship between these two young characters and on the ideas around consent and sexual power and unpacking that from a few different perspectives, and also very much the nature of surviving and navigating abusive relationships and the inherent selfishness versus selflessness of doing so as a parent and whose, you know, safety and happiness you're really prioritizing when you remove your child from that difficult environment. We're going to talk more about all of these themes and the choices made by this text in this next section. So my overall thought is this, that this was a really interesting and striking play and is at its best when it is set apart from the original and the characters are evidently inspired by those original characters. But whereas the Effiginian splot came to such a clever conclusion and worked its way towards this brilliant metaphorical representation of the original tragedy in a modern context that so acutely spoke to where we are now and the state of the nation, this one it doesn't feel explicitly 2025 in the same way Gary Owen is still talking about healthcare, which I think is important to allude to. It's important to bring that into a modern conversation. But there isn't a tremendous reason as to why this couldn't be taking place. Perhaps in the 50s or in the 70s, it doesn't feel quite as thrillingly contemporary. It also, and here's my hot take, doesn't necessarily need to be an adaptation of Ghost. I think at some point during the creation of this piece it move moved far enough away from the ideas of the original and the moments where it nods to it feel now almost like an obligation rather than an opportunity to say something. I actually feel it's more inhibited by the Ibsen than it is arising from it. Because if you were to just take that idea that you're adapting the Ibsen for a modern context and that your enduring themes are the legacy of a terrible father figure and the enduring, inescapable doom of all of that. The world left to us by our parents, if those are the kind of things that you're talking about. But we have no conversation about anything political, really. If we don't talk about the climate crisis, we talk briefly about class, but only really to highlight the discrepancy between the lives lived by the two young characters, one of whom was legitimate child, the other of whom wasn't. I do think it's a little bit of a bizarre decision for us to focus where we do. To be talking about sins of the father and the inherited world and to just have so much conversation around incest and sexual polit the same time. I think it's a really exciting piece of theater. I think it's brilliant how shockingly funny it can be alongside all of its dramatic revelations. I mean, there are moments when Mrs. Alving has to reveal to the two young people who have just consummated their very fresh and loving new relationship that they are, in fact, the half siblings. It turns into Ibsen by way of Jerry Springer, which is hysterical. And Ibsen definitely wasn't getting this many laughs. I think it's bold, I think it's provocative. I think it's certainly a conversation starter. Much more so than if we were to simply stage the original. My take here is perhaps that it doesn't need to necessarily be called ghosts, that it's not an adaptation of, that it's more inspired by, and it could move even further away from this original thing, because I think that might even empower it to say more about the topics that it wants to discuss here. And there are many moments of brilliance. Like I said, some of those laugh lines are hysterically funny. When Callum Scott Howells as Oz is coming to terms with what he's done by the cold light of day and via half a glass of red wine, he talks about, like, a lot of traditional heterosexual pornography, being between, like, stepbrothers and step sisters and saying, it's always step, it's never half. And he declares hysterically that he's done something that even pornhub thinks is beyond the limits of acceptability. That's a fantastic line. I also think it's really interesting to upend the burning down of the orphanage and instead turn this into a very quiet and cold admission of his magic attempts to do so that he subsequently thought better of. And also to shift the roles a little bit here. So there isn't really one obvious villain within the piece. Many of these characters are duplicitous. Many of them are selfish. Reggie's father, Jacob, is trying to start a business for himself because he resents on his own behalf and on his daughters, that they've spent their entire lives working for other people and helping to maintain their wealth. And you know, that they've comfortable and they've gotten by, but they have never been affluent. And so he wants to buy up an old bungalow and turn it into an attractive holiday home. And he wants his daughter to come and work with him. And so to do that, he requests that Mrs. Alving lie to her about a job opportunity. Disappearing Helena. The entire time, Mrs. Alving is slowly wrapping her mind around the selfishness of sending her young son away from an abusive household. Something that she had been criticized for prior to the understanding of the reasons behind it, but that then her son criticizes her for once again, when he points out that even that had a selfishness to it. That trying to preserve his life and trying to keep him alive when at this point he is so depressed and doesn't want to go on, is an act of selfishness. Because it's not about him, it's about her, which is a really difficult conversation to have. And lands us finally at the end of the thing, back in Ibsen ghost's territory. Because the placeholder for him having syphilis and, you know, being prone to mental degeneration at any time and asking her her to help end his life is in this version, his mental health having deteriorated so much, both because of factors from his upbringing and because of recent revelations about all of the incest stuff that wasn't ideal. And the idea of negative mental health being the syphilis of 2025 is something that I think is actually quite brilliant. And when she finally says what he needs to hear from her, this true selfless act of care where she says that she won't stop him if he wants to do this, but she is willing to wake every day that there might be a possibility that he might choose to end his life and she will continue to care for him until then. That finally lands us in terms of the sentiment, in terms of where these characters are, back where ghosts ended, albeit without the original cliffhanger conclusion. But it is a clever way to reinterpret the original ending. I want to talk a little bit more about the writing from Gary Owen and some of these themes in particular is there's a little bit of clumsiness in some of the early dialogue. In terms of a lot of these characters walking into a conversation and with little indication that this is going to happen, suddenly hitting an emotional 10 and declaring all of these old grudges and resentments that they implausibly haven't discussed beforehand. And you have multiple passionate exchanges in which characters form these intense and scolding judgments of behaviors that they only moments ago learned about. When Jacob returns to meet with Helena and Rober and asks her in this moment to take the job opportunity away from Reggie. Because he has this sudden resentment of her that's been going on for years that seems to take her by surprise. And Robert replies to him, you only took Reggie on for money. With the conviction of a man who didn't just find out about that that afternoon. It just all feels a little south of reasonable and believable. It also, not unlike Oswald in the original play, has inherited a problem from its predecessor. Because the first act is bloated with all of this exposition. So much back story and history that these two characters have to articulate to each other, Much of which they both know about already. And so you have to go about finding a way for them to say it to each other. Even though they were both there when it happened. And to my money, there are also some missed opportunities here as well. I think it's so clever to invoke the idea of cancel culture and the reason for which, you know, the reputation of the late Captain Alving might matter. With him being attached to a charitable trust. And the idea of millions funding private health care for children. And trying to separate that from any misdeeds. But we don't talk about it nearly enough. And I had assumed as soon as we found out that the reason that Oz is an actor in this one is because, you know, he wouldn't be able to sustain professional damage to his reputation. But that's not an idea that we really invoke either. And while the impact of Carl Alving's actions forms the basis of the events of the play. I wouldn't say that his presence is felt enduringly beyond. Like lots of images of the back of a man's head decorating the walls on either side, it doesn't feel like he pervades the space and the household still, even though they keep insisting that he does. On the other side, though, there's also a lot of great writing. This sort of Oedipus familiar penny drop moment between the two siblings I thought was great. The entire confrontation between Oz and his mother in the second act is probably a highlight when she has to painstakingly and delicately explained to him why she made the decision to send him off to boarding school as a young child for his own benefit. That's probably the most powerful moment of this entire script when she shares that she was observing in him learned behaviors based on how she was putting up with her husband's abuse and rage. And she wanted to stem the growth of that as soon as possible. I initially really wasn't sure why we were spending so much time with Helen Eleanor explaining to her son how a sexual encounter might be interpreted differently between two people and how consent, enthusiastic consent, could be silently withdrawn halfway through a participation. And that this would change it from either perspective with no verbal indication that that had happened. And I just didn't know why that was a conversation that we needed to be having. I think with where we are socially. I think trying to introduce the idea of plausible deniability and rape is not something that is necessarily respons responsible to talk about on stage. Once this connects back to her relationship and her memories of her relationship with his father and that then begins to impact him, then it all kind of crystallized. But it's a really thorny place for us to find ourselves. When he declares himself, upon learning this to be love's absolute opposite made flesh, something that he repeats. That's a really terrific line, as is Helena's exploration of why she stayed in an abusive marriage. Marriage in a abusive household. And she says it's like the house has collapsed on top of you and shattered every bone in your body. I mean, she's this very strong willed, very feisty character whose recollections of how damaged and fragile that made her feel are all the more powerful for that contrast. On that note, then, let's talk about the performances of this cast. So Victoria Murphy plays Helena. I wasn't sure about her characterization to begin with. She's not the first character that we meet on stage and by the time that she entered, it kind of felt like a slightly drunken Mae west vibe with how provocative she was being. And this, it becomes apparent, is a tool within her arsenal. Later, when Robert, her old flame, tries to convince her to take out a loan so that she can provide all of the money to fund the hospital up front rather than in regular installments so that they don't have any ongoing relationship with the trust in her husband's name, which is a very bizarre concept when he tries to put this across to her and when she tries to persuade him otherwise, she goes about seducing him, trying to lower his little quarter zip, which unfortunately, that's as low as that already goes. But once we get behind the layer of that and once she reluctantly begins talking about the abuse that she sustained during this marriage and the choices that she was forced to make make, that is when it becomes a really fascinating portrayal. And her best work is in this vulnerability and some of the obfuscation that she does when her son asks her particularly challenging questions. Behavior that he then points out to her immediately and says, don't do that. Stop doing that. When she is avoiding the question, when she is just moving away from the uncomfortable topic of conversation rather than really embracing to him and for herself the realities of what happened to her during this marriage. Callum Scott Howells plays her son Oz. This production's answer to Oswald, an out of work actor. He is sensational in this role. Oh, how I wish I could have seen him as the MC in Cabaret. That feels like a huge mistake that he is one of the few that I missed in the West End production because he's so dynamic, he's so alive, he is so playful in his delivery. He is so extravagant in this role, reminding me very much of Mozart in the Peter Schaefer play Amadeus. That would be another great role for him. He has this flamboyant exuberance that pairs very well with the kind of dysfunctional privilege of his character as he is stropping about the stage in this oversized cardigan, boxer shorts and bleach blonde hair. He really comes alive, though, when he's alone with Reggie and he's grinning maniacally and he feels to a certain extent undermined by her because he doesn't feel like he's able to get away with anything. Like she challenges him and he's opening a bottle of wine between his thighs and he's scurrying excitedly around the room because he's so flustered with her. And then after all of that gets taken away and he goes to this place of anger and he is standing over the shivering body of his mother, who slumps down against a wall at the side of the stage and he becomes his father. That's another powerful visual that continues into the second act as he goes to some really dark places. He is astonishing in this. It's the kind of performance that has convinced me to watch everything else he will ever do on stage. Speaking of the walls, momentarily, I do want to give a moment to Merle Hensel's set design, who also designed the costumes. We have two walls on either side of this playing space and then a sheer back wall that there is constant haze behind that is lit in a handful of exciting, interesting ways. Flooded with orange at the beginning, later turning blue and then more starkly just white and growing dimmer. There's a moment where the haze dissipates, where all of the lies and the secrets about the past have kind of been revealed. So there is no longer a smoke, their history. But the thing about these walls is that they are constantly, in Rachel O. Riordan's direction, throwing each other against them, draping themselves against them. They are having amorous relationships. Up against the walls like these must be like very impressive load bearing walls for everything that they sustain during this in this house. There's a moment in the second act when Mrs. Alving talks about her ambition to sell the house and finally escape from the memories of her husband. And I'm thinking, good luck with all of this presumable sex wall damage. But that's not my place to say. I' property expert. Let's carry on talking about these performances. Patricia Allison plays Reggie. Dica Walmsley plays her father, Jacob. It is a slightly inexplicable switch to anger that he has to portray when he returns after we first meet him. The two of them have a charming enough initial encounter with them being the first two people that we meet on stage. I wish there were just a little more in terms of layers to each of these performances. It feels as though the affluent and wealthy characters in the narrative get to have a lot more dysfunction, despite the fact that all of these characters have led completely bizarre lives by being in association with each other. The strangest character, though, might be Mr. Anderson. Mr. Robert Anderson, played by Rashan Stone. Because he arrives with all of this emotional baggage, he is hugely unafraid of conversational provocation, launching all of these declarations in the faces of different baffled scene partners. And though I don't believe he's meant to represent a villain in this very morally ambiguous piece, there is such an oddity to where we get to in the second act when to her, the vice chair, who he's just been on a zoom call with, of the trust of the foundation of the hospital, whatever has knows someone who is prepared to offer you a loan that you have to agree to right now, who wants you to call him back. And then when she tries to seduce him afterwards and he reveals that everything's already in motion and there's no point to trying to win him over, and he says, I knew you would do this to the abuse victim who only moments ago he was trying to talk out of her entire fortune. It's all just a little bizarre, and for him to try and exist as any kind of a voice of reason in all of these proceedings doesn't really work for me alongside these strange decisions. So, like I said, plenty to talk about with this production and I think a really great testimonial there on withstanding abuse and the impact of that across multiple generations. And some of those ideas explored towards the end is preserving the happiness of your children, the innocence of your children, inherently a selfish act, at least the way that it was depicted in this story. It's really interesting stuff. It's bold conversations that I don't know that we've had before on stage, certainly that weren't quite articulated in the same way in Ibsen's original play. But is the ghosts of it all getting in the way? Would this be even more emboldened to have those conversations in its own completely separate context? That is what I'm wondering, but I would love to know what you think. If you have already been to see Ghosts at the Lyric Hammersmith, let me know what you thought in the comments section down below. If not, and if the production sounds intriguing to you, then feel free to go and check it out. In the meantime, thank you so much for listening to this new play review. Make sure you are subscribed to my theatre themed YouTube channel. For many more coming soon or following me on podcast platforms. I hope that everyone is staying safe and that you have a stagey day for 10 more seconds. I'm Mickey Jo Theatre. Oh my God. Hey, thanks for watching. Have a Stagey Day. Subscribe.