Ghosts
Closing: May 10, 2025Ghosts - 2025 West End History , Info & More
Lyric Hammersmith
King Street London
“When you spend your life in thrall to a monster you find yourself trying to make monstrous
things somehow bearable.”
Helena is a woman on a mission. Since the death of her high-flying husband, she has dedicated herself to reclaiming his legacy. And her hard work is about to pay off, with a new children’s hospital bearing his name on the brink of opening.
But when their son Oz returns to the family home for the grand unveiling, he has ambitions
of his own. Ambitions that threaten to unravel their family’s most tightly kept secrets.
Gary Owen’s new play, a contemporary reimagining of Ibsen’s classic, is directed by Artistic
Director Rachel O’Riordan, reuniting the team behind the critically acclaimed Iphigenia in
Splott, Romeo and Julie and Killology.
FEATURED REVIEWS FOR Ghosts
A frustrating, awkward update
4 / 10
Peals of audience laughter are not the sound you normally associate with Ibsen. Gary Owen’s updated version of the playwright’s brooding drama about an embattled widow, an orphanage and the poisonous legacy of a dissolute husband certainly isn’t lacking in courage. In his latest offering at the Lyric Hammersmith in London the Welsh playwright throws himself into rearranging the original storyline of Ghosts, but the sudden shifts in tone, sometimes lurching from awkward comedy to Grand Guignol in a few sentences, undermine Rachel O’Riordan’s production.
Gasps and laughter greet this modern revamp of Ibsen’s shocker
10 / 10
Ghosts exemplifies Ibsen’s creed that the key events of a play take place before it starts: everyone is either hiding, or having hidden, something from them. The actors grippingly chart the negotiation of these secrets and suspicions. Victoria Smurfit’s Helena shows how the greater agency of a modern Mrs Alving has not prevented moral compromises but also allows her contemporary solutions. Callum Scott Howells as Oz is sassy, sarcastic but ecstatic at the prospect even of dangerous love.
Ghosts History
Other Productions of Ghosts
| 1894 | Broadway |
Broadway |
| 1903 | Broadway |
Broadway |
| 1912 | Broadway |
Broadway |
| 1915 | Broadway |
Broadway |
| 1916 | Broadway |
Broadway |
| 1919 | Broadway |
Broadway |
| 1923 | Broadway |
Broadway |
| 1926 | Broadway |
Broadway |
| 1927 | Broadway |
Broadway |
| 1933 | Broadway |
Broadway |
| 1935 | Broadway |
Broadway |
| 1937 | Broadway |
Broadway |
| 1948 | Broadway |
Broadway |
| 1973 | Off-Broadway |
Off-Broadway |
| 1975 | Off-Broadway |
Off-Broadway |
| 1982 | Broadway |
Broadway |
| 1988 | Off-Broadway |
Off-Broadway |
| 2002 | Off-Broadway |
Off-Broadway |
| 2010 | West End |
London Production West End |
| 2013 | West End |
West End Revival West End |
| 2015 | Off-Broadway |
Brooklyn Academy of Music Off-Broadway Production Off-Broadway |
| 2025 | Off-Broadway |
Lincoln Center Theater Off-Broadway |
| 2025 | West End |
West End |
Videos