Features

It’s always awkward to find yourself challenging a sacred cow. So when a revered Bay Area theatre company produces a play by a genius of modern drama and loads it with justifiably respected actors, it’s rather uncomfortable if you think the whole thing is a bust. 

It’s even worse when there’s a chorus of approval about the production Berkeley Repertory’s presentation of Ibsen’s Ghosts arising from critics you respect. Presumably, however, there is always room for a minority opinion—and it looks like this one may qualify. 

The play itself is just fine. Ghosts has a plot stuffed with dark secrets from the past (the ghosts of the title) and totally awful things happening to innocent people. But this was Ibsen writing, people. He didn’t flinch at introducing syphilis, incest and a few other such niceties. Certainly the play scandalized a very large chunk of Europe in its time, but that doesn’t mean the writing is at fault. 

All of the actors are good. It’s just that they keep getting sabotaged by the production itself, with a lot of first-rate talent going down the drain in a presentation overly tainted by melodrama. It is, for example, not until a lengthy and heartbreaking final scene between the powerful actress Ellen McLaughlin (Mrs. Helene Alving) and Davis Duffield, who plays her dying son, that Duffield is freed to demonstrate the genuine talent largely concealed throughout the bulk of the action. With two fine actors permitted to demonstrate their ability, at that point the play becomes worth seeing. 

For reasons that are never clarified, Duffield (Osvald Alving) had spent much of his previous time on stage literally flinging himself about the furniture. If that’s supposed to represent brain damage, it seems remarkable that the symptoms simply vanish when he’s heading into his greatest crisis. 

But there does seem to be a bent toward overly exuberant staging in other parts of the production. The opening scene, a quarrel between Mrs. McLaughlin’s maid, Regina Engstrand (Emily Ackerman) and her presumed father, the scoundrel Jakob Engstrand (Brian Keith Russell), is marred by the unintended absurdity of the delicate Engstrand’s repeated attempts to push the man—who looks at least twice her size and weight—out the door. 

Granted, one translation does call for her to do it one time, but does the version the Rep uses really require that many repetitions? 

Some people seem to find the giant-sized set symbolic of something or the other-one must decide for oneself, of course. But it is perhaps worthy of noting that a background which presumably suggests the 19th century interior of an isolated house in the country is scaled to the entire height of the stage—perhaps 30 feet or so. As the play continues, various chunks of the background disappear, leaving the bare bones of the stage behind the set open to view. More symbolism, of course. 

But the biggest deal with symbolism is the sudden substitution at a crisis point of a backdrop which to an untutored eye is more than a little reminiscent of those huge murals from the 1930s one occasionally sees on public buildings. Since the actors continue to carry on in straight 19th century style, this doesn’t seem like the very best idea in the world. 

Besides, what happened to the isolated, incest-driven, claustrophobic action of the play? 

Perhaps the trickiest role to present to a modern audience is the sanctimonious and curiously naïve Pastor Manders (James Carpenter). To modern eyes, his oblivion to his own motivation, and the outrageous gaps in his logic, border on the absurd. Part of the problem, of course, is that he represents a Puritanism that has either disappeared or assumed other forms. 

Mercifully, Ellen McLaughlin is permitted to carry the bulk of the plot without too much interference with her acting. Mrs. Alving is a wealthy widow living in an isolated country estate on the eve of the dedication of an elaborate orphanage which she is giving to the town in memory of her dead husband. 

This isn’t the act of sentimental respect the pastor would like to think. It turns out that McLaughlin’s character has spent her life covering up the quite disgusting facts of her husband’s lifestyle and that she is giving the orphanage to get rid of the last of his tainted money---she’s earned the rest of the family fortunes herself. 

But her monumental struggle to rid herself of the damage her husband’s lifestyle has created fails disastrously. When Oswald returns home, the sins of the father are visited upon the son. 

And upon his mother. 

Berkeley Repertory Theatre’s Ghosts runs through April 11. 2025 Addison St. 647-2949.