In Ghosts, Gary Owen reimagines Henrik Ibsen’s masterpiece as a pointy, humorous and gut-punching home drama set in a misty, gray nook of contemporary Wales. The result’s a placing story of popularity, self-preservation and the price of parental sacrifice, delivered with biting wit and tour de pressure performances.
Victoria Smurfit performs Helena, a girl calmly orchestrating the opening of a brand new hospital in honour of her late husband. However behind her crisp white athleisure and thoroughly constructed smile is a girl haunted – not simply by the reminiscence of her abusive partner, however by the alternatives she made to guard her son from the identical destiny. However when that son, Oz (Callum Scott Howells), returns from London filled with resentment over his chilly and distant childhood, secrets and techniques begin to unravel at a dizzying tempo.
Owen’s script is pacy and electrical, effectively unpacking years of backstory with out ever getting slowed down. The dialogue is tight and clever, usually laugh-out-loud humorous, and by no means afraid to lean into emotional discomfort.
Smurfit offers a masterful efficiency because the coldly flirtatious and emotionally evasive Helena. She doesn’t play her gradual deterioration with hysteria, as a substitute leaning right into a quiet, heart-sinking desperation that hits more durable. Disgrace bubbles beneath her polished floor, erupting in bursts of avoidant behaviour as she refuses to acknowledge the horrors she is retelling.
Reuniting with Romeo and Julie director Rachel O’Riordan, Howells delivers one more reminder of why he’s one of the thrilling actors on stage as we speak. He instructions the house with complete ease, the one performer to actually use it to his benefit – slamming, stomping, touching and pacing with stressed power that completely captures Oz’s entitlement and wish for consideration.
There’s a danger of such a personality falling into cliché – the sulky, privileged inheritor who blames all the things on the truth that mummy didn’t hug him sufficient – however Howells brings such conviction and specificity that it feels fully contemporary. At instances, you don’t know whether or not you need to slap him or kiss him.
The manufacturing’s visible world, nevertheless, can’t fairly match the calibre of its lead efficiency. The brutalist gray set, with its minimalist Bauhaus furnishings and ominous wallpaper, is supposed to evoke a fortress within the clouds – chilly, elevated, and minimize off from the world. In observe, although, it feels disjointed and skews oddly sci-fi. Stylised lighting selections really feel like an identical misstep. The actors already talk all the things we have to really feel; bathing the stage in blue to indicate disappointment feels each redundant and jarring.
The supporting forged lands considerably flaccidly, with one-dimensional performances outshone by the kinetic leads. Patricia Allison and Rhashan Stone, whereas succesful, appear barely adrift subsequent to the command of Smurfit and Howells. Nonetheless, there’s a lot to admire on this adaptation. The themes are not any much less potent than in Ibsen’s unique: the results of silence, the ache of understanding when to lie, and the query of whether or not love can ever be sufficient to cease historical past repeating itself.
Ghosts is a pointy, snappy reimagining of a basic. Gary Owen’s adaptation manages to be each darkly entertaining and emotionally resonant, pulling audiences into its inky depths with witty dialogue and stunning humour.
‘Ghosts’ is on on the Lyric Hammersmith till 10 Could; lyric.co.uk
