GHOSTS
By Henrik Ibsen
Haymarket Theatre, Leicester 1983
| Photo copyright Black Hat Productions. Click on the thumbnail to view larger image. |
| Role Nigel Bennett as Jacob Engstrand |
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| Anecdote "Ghosts was done at the Haymarket Theatre Leicester. It is a tremendous play, and the only thing that I thought was wrong with the production was that I wasn't playing the lead. (Such ego!) I played Engstrand a ne'er do well gardener come handyman whose daughter was the maid of the household. The biggest buzz of this play for me was that a wonderful British actress called Sylvia Sims was playing the main role. I had been a fan of hers for years, and have to admit to being more than a little in love. She was as wonderful and charming in real life as she was on screen, and we became good friends.(If you want to see who she is, get a copy of "Ice Cold In Alex" a great old British war movie). I remember at the end of each performance there was a tremendous climactic emotional scene for her, during which the tears flowed freely. We would then all stand in the dark waiting for the curtain call while she kept saying, 'Wait a minute, wait a minute' as she tried to wipe away the tears and get her face back into some kind of order. I always wanted to walk over and give her a big hug." |
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| Play Synopsis "I sometimes think we're all ghosts, Pastor Manders. It's not only what we've inherited from our parents that haunts us. It's all the old obsolete ideas, all kinds of obsolete beliefs. They're not alive in us: but even so they stick to us and we can't shake free of them . . . this country must be full of ghosts. One for every grain of sand, I should think. And that's why we're all so miserably afraid of the light."
Helen Alving, widow of the late Captain Alving, spent her marriage building a false life around her husband's infidelities. She even exiled her son to protect the boy from his father's debauched ways. Captain Alving was unfaithful and a drunkard, but that does not sway her from wanting to dedicate an orphanage in his name, and so with the help of the tediously pious Pastor Manders, who was her love interest years ago, they set on their task. Mrs. Alving's son Oswald has recently returned from Paris. He tells his mother he is dying of a progressive disease (syphillis is implied), the same disease that killed his father, and yet does not know how he contracted it. The disease serves as the metaphor for the family secret -- the sins of the fathers visited upon their sons. Oswald falls in love with his mother's serving girl, Regine Engstrand. Regine's carpenter father, Jacob Engstrand, turns out not to be Regine's real father when Mrs. Alving, to prevent a greater sin, is forced to reveal that Regine is actually Oswald's half sister from an adulterous relationship the Captain had with Regine's mother. The unstable, dysfunctional relationships within the family are the focus of this play: Widow Alving and her late husband and the pastor, her former lover; Oswald's relationship with both his parents and with Regine, Jacob and his daughter. The foundling house burns down mysteriously; and Oswald asks his mother if she will end his life when he no longer is capable of comprehending, something foreshadowed by his intermittant bouts of dementia which appear to be progressive. She promises to end his life if Oswald cannot to spare him further torment, but in an exceptionally powerful final scene, Mrs. Alving, torn by love and guilt, cannot make a decision. |
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| Links of Interest The Ibsen Centre |
This page revised September 1, 2000