Ghosts

Because it established the pattern for so much work to come, Ibsen’s 1882 drama can seem to a casual observer like a tissue of clichés. Frankly, most of Arthur Miller’s career, not to mention Ingmar Bergman’s, is almost unthinkable without it. Systematically laying bare the hidden scandals that poison a seemingly respectable bourgeois family, Ghosts scandalized its initial audiences with its frank depiction of syphilis, among other things. Nowadays, the play’s careful exposition is likely to seem a little quaint. Still, Ibsen remains one step ahead of many of his successors with his insistence that the ghosts haunting his play are not simply the bad deeds of past generations but more significantly the dead values to which his characters hypocritically cling. Its social and ethical critique, rather than its melodramatic structure, keeps the play of more than historical interest.

By and large, BoHo gives us a solid, if not particularly inventive, version of Ghosts. Lanford Wilson’s new translation, despite being saddled with the occasional jarring anachronism (“kicking back,” “Mom”), transmits the action of the play in a lean, direct idiom. As furtive matriarch Helen Alving, Saren Nofs-Snyder offers a technically adept portrayal, though her performance at times becomes outsized for the Heartland Studio’s tight confines. (In general, director Sullivan ought to dial down the theatrics, leaning more heavily on the intense intimacy that his stage provides.) Charles Riffenburg has a more naturalistic take on Helen’s artistic and doomed son Oswald; their scenes together in the final movements of the play make the costs of their buried lives compelling. Costume designer Sarah Putnam has created a finely realistic ensemble for the cast, including a nice piece of delicate constraint for Helen. While this production may err on the side of heavy-handedness, it’s nonetheless a welcome opportunity to see a landmark of modern drama.

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