Review: HENRIK IBSEN'S GHOSTS at The Gamm Theatre

The Gamm Theatre's new adaptation of Ibsen's Ghosts by Gamm's Artistic Director Tony Estrella packs an incredible and indelible punch that may never leave you.

There's something about the late 1800's playwrights and the way they write about life, it's impact and the introspection of it all that is like no other time period. And there's certainly no playwright who does that ponderance better than Norwegian's favorite son Henrik Ibsen in 1881's Ghosts. 

While Ibsen's more famous A Doll's House, written two years earlier in 1879, deals with a wife and mother who can't stomach a marriage devoid of love any longer, she decides to leave her husband and child behind, something very rare at the time though sadly not so much now. Ghosts is just the opposite of its predecessor, showing you how it would all unfold if a woman decided to stay despite years of a husband's infidelity and what those skeletons, or Ghosts, hidden deeply in a family's closet, would do if they ever got out. 

As the play begins we learn of the preparations for tomorrow's opening of Captain Alving Memorial Orphanage. The Sea Captain has been dead for 10 years now and an orphanage has been built to honor his life. Maid Regina Engstrand, played by Jackie Scholl, is busy tending to lunch when her father Jacob, played by Kelby T. Akin, abruptly arrives at her work at the Alving's home to talk of the orphanage's impending opening. That orphanage opening is also on the mind of arriving Pastor Manders, played by Jim O'Brien, who must get the Captains widow Mrs. Helen Alving's signatures on all the required documents as she is the sole donor for the new orphanage.

But you can tell right away there's a brooding feeling in the room, perhaps Mrs. Alving's weird mannerisms or slight eye roll when her husband's name is mentioned. When the Pastor goes in depth into how wonderful her late husband was and the impact he's had, Helen has clearly had enough. She describes to the Pastor, in excruciating detail, the years of infidelity that she suffered at the hands of her revered Sea Captain husband. Even when she gave birth to her only child Oswald, played by Liam Roberts, who has appeared for the orphanage dedication, she hoped the infidelity would stop but it never did. 

The Pastor admits that he's heard his far share of rumors over the years about the captains meaderings but nothing this specific. "You can't change the past so why dwell on it," he admits to Helen whose had decades of turning the other cheek but not today. "A leopard does not change its spots," she countered through the Pastor's condescension. "This is what duty looks like."

Mrs. Helen Alving, played by Jeanine Kane, puts on the performance of a lifetime as a mother who tried to leave but was forced back to her husband by the Pastor, only to suffer many more decades of abuse while she kept her "duty" and remained a good wife and mother.

But when Oswald, now a 20-something successful artist who reminds her of her husband in ways she's not ready to admit, begins doubling over in pain and reveals a debilitating disease that his doctor tracks back to his father's indiscretions, Oswald still doesn't believe his father is a bad person, something the town feels as well. 

But his mother has had enough of this decades-long charade.

Ibsen's Ghosts forces you to ponder what to do with your own and your family's skeletons and what would happen if they ever got out. For Mrs. Alving, whatever weight that may have been lifted when she revealed her own ghosts, what cost did it come at and is it, in the end, worth it?

The Gamm pulled out all the stops in this incredible production, from a redefined stage that made theatre-goers feel more a part of the production then ever to stunning acting from all five of the actors who helped make Ghosts one of the most memorable performances you may ever see.

Ghosts is not a play that will give you a happy-ever-after and may in fact give you the opposite of that. This two hour production with one intermission will stun you with skeletons revealed that are so shocking and an end that will remain with you for years after.