THEATRE REVIEW: GHOSTS
16 OCT/11

JOHN COULBOURN - QMI Agency
R: 3.5/5
Pictured: Gregory Prest, Nancy Palk

TORONTO - If his reputation had depended solely on the play GHOSTS, one suspects playwright Henrik Ibsen wouldn’t figure as prominently in the classical theatre canon as he does. For while at its heart GHOSTS confronts the same hidebound social hypocrisy that brings drama to works like Hedda Gabbler and A Doll’s House, as a play it relies so heavily on theatrical coincidence that in the end it all but collapses under the weight of the chickens that the playwright brings home to roost. That said, it is, one suspects, a slightly better work than what Soulpepper’s new production suggests. Adapted and directed by Morris Panych, GHOSTS opened at the Young Centre Friday.

Set in the library of an upscale Norwegian country home late in the 19th century, the play opens as preparations are being completed for the dedication of a new orphanage, built to honour the memory of the late Captain Alving, whose widow, played by Nancy Palk, occupies the home in which the play is set.

Those preparations are, of course, foremost in the mind of Regine, the young woman Mrs, Alving has plucked from squalor and turned into her housekeeper/companion, and the ambitious young woman is less than thrilled when her drunken father (Diego Matamoros) drops by, determined to lure her away from her comfortable life with the widow Alving. And though Regine quickly dispatches her unwelcome visitor, she finds her father’s pleas echoed by the upright Pastor Manders (Joe Ziegler), who, as financial advisor to the widow Alving, has dropped by to go over some final details, including insurance, before the new orphanage is dedicated.

Discussions between the good widow and the pastor are interrupted by the widow’s grown son, Oswald, played by Gregory Prest, who has returned to his backwater home for the dedication of his father’s memorial, having spent the last several years abroad earning a considerable reputation as an artist. But all is not as it initially seems in this seemingly tranquil house, and slowly the secrets that have too long been tucked away begin to break loose, shaking the very foundations not only of this family, but of society itself, as the festering results of spousal abuse, alcoholism, rape and even venereal disease are made manifest, with increasingly tragic results.

Working on an imposing set designed by Ken MacDonald, its numerous nooks and crannies evocatively lit by Alan Brodie, Panych attempts to make the most of this high octane cast. And while there are moments of Ibsen-eque clarity scattered throughout, in the main the interaction never quite manages to strike the right note to carry things off, undone sometimes by miscasting, at others by a translation that slips too often into contemporary argot.

Though he gives it his best effort, the normally spot-on Ziegler fails to find the right note of religious zealotry and self-satisfaction in his portrayal of the chauvinistic Manders, a problem further exacerbated by Palk’s determination to pack as much sub-text into her performance as possible. And while Prest makes an impressive, if somewhat healthy showing as the troubled Oswald, Michelle Monteith’s primly buttoned-up Regine never manifests for the audience that powerful life force which so impresses the other characters in the play.

In the end, it all adds up to a production that falls squarely into the middle range of adequate, admittedly affording a few opportunities to catch glimpses of the genius that would make Ibsen great but rarely, if ever, striking those notes that might haunt an audience after the curtain falls.