Ghosts Off-Broadway Reviews

Distasteful though that is, it’s good drama, and 'Ghosts' remains a provocative, engrossing work, to which O’Brien’s production does justice. It also does justice to the idea of provocative, engrossing work in the first place. 'Ghosts' is the 14th and presumably final collaboration between O’Brien and André Bishop, Lincoln Center Theater’s producing artistic director, who is stepping down at the end of this season after 33 years with the company. Their notable productions of Hellman, Stoppard, Shakespeare and others have earned them this warm valedictory moment. And yet not totally valedictory. As 'Ghosts' demonstrates, men’s imprints do not fade so easily. And nothing is ever as haunted as a stage.

Jack O’Brien’s new attempt on Ibsen’s reviled and—eventually—revered truth-bomb doesn’t so much answer that question as sub it out for another less interesting one: What happens if you put a bunch of famous people in the show and, for the majority of its 110 minutes, play it pretty straight? In a streamlined, surprisingly low-key new translation by the Irish playwright Mark O’Rowe, this Ghosts doesn’t exactly founder, but it doesn’t haunt or horrify either. It feels stuck between times and impulses: 1880s Norway or now? Stylized or not? Unashamedly tragic or vaguely ironic?

Of course, this all-or-nothing approach only works if you have great actors, and O’Brien has assembled the best ensemble now performing on the New York stage. What is especially satisfying is that Billy Crudup and Lily Rabe are that unique mix of oil and water that produces combustible moments on stage. Crudup’s Pastor Manders is a busy, petty man who changes his moral convictions faster than a Republican senator. Where Crudup is giftedly mannered, Rabe takes the opposite approach to portray Helena Alving, a woman who has dedicated her life to protecting a son, Oswald (Levon Hawke), from a dissolute husband, the deceased Captain Alving. Rabe turns Helena into the drama’s black hole. Her every utterance, glance, and gesture is a master class in minimalism. Yet, her gravitas sucks the other characters’ life force into her quietly, fiercely swirling orbit.

O’Rowe’s translation minimizes talk of syphilis and scandal, focusing instead on the characters’ interpersonal dynamics, which are solid but unremarkable without the prurience coursing through the work’s venereal veins. Sex might have been more scandalous in 1881, when the play’s publication nearly ruined Ibsen’s career, but eschewing it outright seems a misguided attempt to honor his larger intention of skewering bourgeois morality. Despite the fine performances from the cast, Jack O’Brien’s production never provides a reason as to why we should be eavesdropping on this particular family.

The cast is deluxe for an off-Broadway production. Billy Crudup portrays Pastor Manders, the estranged friend of Mrs. Alving who as the play begins has come to make a rare visit to her estate, bringing documents that need to be signed before the opening of the orphanage Mrs. Alving is funding. Mr. Crudup’s handsome magnetism and the casual warmth he brings to the role are distinct assets, making Mrs. Alving’s fondness for him credible—the fondness might once have led to something more—despite his frequent retreats into pious sternness or shock when he takes stock of her radical reading tastes.

Mark O’Rowe does fine work, honoring the author’s intent while subtly framing the words in contemporary vernacular. Jack O’Brien helms the entire production with tremendous economy and restraint. With the exception of Japhy Weideman’s gorgeous blue-hued, rain-soaked lighting, this is not a technically showy production. The creative team wisely focused their collaborative efforts on the powerful text.

Ghosts ask how deep you can bury unpleasant truths before they fester into —perhaps fatalist — despair. How much does holding back a family secret make you an accomplice to your and your loved ones’ misery? Unfortunately, Ghosts struggles to sink hooks into those questions, even as it crawls toward its chilling, inconclusive end.

O’Rowe’s adaptation is sharp and clarifying. He cuts down some of Ibsen’s verbiage but it never sounds overly contemporary. He shaves away some of the one-the-nose-ness and excess from Ibsen. He lets the actors and performances fill in where Ibsen might explain.