Ghosts

[nineveh_uk]

I greatly enjoyed Ghosts yesterday evening at the Trafalgar Studios, with Lesley Manville as Mrs Alving. Having seen Manville as Lona Hassel in Pillars of the Community at the National, in which she was brilliant, this was a major draw. The production lived up to its promise, and was excellent; the decision to do it straight through without an interval has rightly been praised in the reviews and really worked. I couldn’t see where you could possible have an interval make sense, though it probably helps that the theatre has lots of leg room. It was “adapted and directed by Richard Eyre” (I don’t know what his C19 Danish is like, perhaps the programme that I didn’t buy mentions a translator), but it seemed to be adaptation as a freer translation rather than “Don’t worry darling! I invested your dissolute father’s money in exciting new medical developments. Some penicillin will sort you out and we shall move forward into a new life together.”*

Anyway, it was a good play text, good design, terrific direction and acting. You can absolutely see why it was a tremendous shocker when it came out; Ibsen’s always keen on skewing social hypocrisies, not least those guided by “what will people say” rather than human reason and decency, the characterisation of Pastor Manders is scathing, and a central message of “self-abnegation by a woman will not magically transform the character of a complete shit and maybe divorce is in fact sometimes a better idea” was perhaps not going to win over the critics who had their position by virtue of being signed up to it.

Speaking of dubious hereditary traits, I read Brat Farrar on the train. I enjoyed it, but would have done so more had it been less ragingly snobbish**. I can see why Ginty Marlow liked it.

*Though it is handy for the modern viewer that since congenital syphilis is not transmitted from the father skipping the mother, Ibsen gives a second possible route for transmission from Dad. Besides it being symbolic, that is.

**And a bit of the ending REALLY annoyed me. No, that is NOT the best solution for all concerned because after all it's in the past.

Comments

[sonetka.livejournal.com]

I don't know how I've made it this far without ever seeing anything by Ibsen -- there have been performances in plenty but they always seemed to be taking place when I was doing things like recovering from giving birth. I should make more of an effort to check them out so I can finally learn more about him beyond "Nora slams the door when she leaves her husband at the end of A Doll's House."

Brat Farrar is excellent, but with Tey you just have to accept that snobbishness will be part of the landscape. Was the bit which disturbed you the bit about "losing" the stylograph? I didn't like it much, either -- especially since if the idea was the keep talk down, that would be impossible anyway with the discovery of Brat's identity (and unless UK small towns are substantially different from US ones, there is no way in hell that people would let that story die any time within the current century. I can't tell what Eleanor is thinking about that!)

[nineveh-uk.livejournal.com]

I've seen various Ibsens, but somehow never the really famous ones, so I was particularly glad not to miss this (just - I heard it was on a fortnight ago, and it closed yesterday!).

That was the bit I didn't like - well, the whole "the police will just sort it out quietly and protect everyone's reputation, we don't want local scandal" business. I can buy not prosecuting Brat, given that he hasn't really benefitted, and there's good evidence that he was planning to come clean about things to his own detriment, but the rest of the cover-up is the sort of thing that really annoys me in detective stories.

[antisoppist.livejournal.com]

you just have to accept that snobbishness will be part of the landscape
Like being able to tell whether or not people are evil/15 year-old sex maniacs by their eye colour.

If Eleanor really does want Brat, she'd be better off just facing it out and ignoring what people say because I agree, people are going to be saying lots for a very long time.

When I read it in my teens, I was just pleased that Eleanor got the farm (even with the death duties). What if one of the twins had been a boy? I suppose the farm would be safe if it was Jane, but Ruth is Simon all over again. Now I think it's the inherited property that's the whole problem. Without There Have Always Been Ashbys at Latchetts, Bee could have kept her job and taken all the children off to live in a flat in London and no-one would have had to be self-sacrificing for the sake of the estate* or killed anyone else for it. And yes no plot, true.

*see also Antonia Forest

[nineveh-uk.livejournal.com]

Not to mention position in family. "Second sons are dodgy" indeed.

Perhaps Ruth, not being horsey, might have been sensible and flogged it. Or considered that, like the Marlows might have done*, they could perfectly well have rented it out, hard as it is to imagine Simon getting a job. Eleanor isn't too bad, given that she does at least seem to work hard. I hope she can only pay death duties by selling a farm to Mr Gates, though.

*I am now wondering about Mrs Marlow's role in this. Does she want to move to the country?

[antisoppist.livejournal.com]

Second sons need something to occupy them, even if it is murder. I like Eleanor. She's sensible, hard-working and has developed her own separate business with a transferrable skill as a riding instructor if Simon had wanted her out after he inherited.

Mrs Marlow married a dashing naval officer and has an entire chest full of dance dresses. It doesn't sound like someone who fancied being a farmer's wife with no-one to talk to all day but Mrs Bertie and Mrs Merrick next door. The Girlsown mailing list used to have threads entitled "What does Mrs Marlow do all day?" Perhaps she did lots of things in London and from Falconer's Lure onwards is in the throes of post-moving-to-the-country-depression.

Have you read Miss Pym Disposes, which really is about taking the law into your own hands.

[nineveh-uk.livejournal.com]

Perhaps she goes into the local town (whatever it's called) that is in fact a very short distance away and likewise close to Kingscote, being careful to avoid days on which her children are actually there. Though having said that, since Lawrie and Nicola have been at boarding school for what's really a relatively short period of time, she has presumably spent quite a lot of the last 15 years in childcare rather than gadding about London, given the total lack of mention of any nanny.

Now she's reminding me of Mrs Tallant in "Arabella" who is fond of her husband, and doesn't seem to regret her choice, but nonetheless wants her daughter to make an exciting London marriage for a variety of reasons...

[sonetka.livejournal.com]

My youngest daughter has baby blue eyes, but since she's only two I have yet to discover whether she's a plausible liar or not :). I don't think Ruth would be as bad as Simon, because she doesn't ride (so no cozening of future victims onto Timber) and I think Nineveh's right that she'd be perfectly happy to sell or rent the place since she has no interest in horses. I can't imagine what Simon's job would have been; he seems like one of those types who's too good for any job in which he isn't in complete control of everything, and who expects to have one handed to him.

[nineveh-uk.livejournal.com]

Perhaps Simon might have gone into politics...

[helenajust.livejournal.com]

I can't comment on the play because I don't know it, but I do know and love Brat Farrar. I'm fascinated by the very end of it, i.e. after the cover-up.

Who do you think Brat ends up with, Eleanor, or Bee, or neither? And by "ends up with" I mean marries, or lives with as a lover rather than a friend. I'd be interested in your opinion too, sonetka.

[nineveh-uk.livejournal.com]

I was wondering who Brat ended up with, not least whether Bee's sudden offer of joining her in the stud in Ireland was a means of getting him away from Eleanor, whether or not she was romantically interested in him herself...

[helenajust.livejournal.com]

That's why I asked what you thought, because I've always thought that Brat realised that he loved Bee, and Bee reciprocated, despite the age difference. When he was delirious, Bee was the one he wanted, and the description of how she feels waiting to see whether he would recover gave me the impression that she was not feeling merely aunt-like about him. We also learn precisely who Brat is, so they knows they're not too closely related. His response to her suggestion of the Irish stud farm seems to suggest more, too, even accepting that he's still very weak.

But it's all so vague!

[nineveh-uk.livejournal.com]

I'm wondering now how old Bee is, specifically is she pre- or post-menopause? I don't think her exact age is mentioned in the text, but I'm playing whether or not she expects to be able to have children into my calculations (against Eleanor, of whom it would be expected) - would P + E be good becauses you get an extra dose of Ashby at Latchetts, or bad because the extra dose is illegitimate?

[antisoppist.livejournal.com]

I think it's one of those where, if you read it as a child, you think everyone is terribly grown-up and then later come to realise that they were only about 26. Do we know if Bee was older or younger than her brother-their-father? Patrick and Simon were 13 on his death so he's got to be at least early 30s when he died and probably older. At the time of his death Bee's got a job and has been left their guardian - arrangements were more casual then but presumably the lawyers must have approved of her competence - but it's only 8 years ago.

But I think Brat sees her as a mother figure. He doesn't know how to categorise the feeling he has for her because it isn't romantic, but it's not as if he's ever had a mother.

[sonetka.livejournal.com]

I'm conventional on this one: I always thought it was Eleanor -- it seems clear that he's developing strong feelings for her during the book and I thought Bee wanted to take him away for a bit at the end not because of any incipient romance between the two of them but because the situation is complicated (to put it mildly), it's all happened very fast, and she doesn't want Brat and Eleanor eloping and then regretting it. Bee is very attached to Brat, but it didn't seem romantic -- after all, she thinks she *has* known him for a long time, he's Patrick The Idealized Nephew, and she was certainly attached to Patrick and to his memory afterwards.

But on thinking about it more, I'm not sure if Brat and Eleanor could make it work, especially if Eleanor stays at Latchetts. The fact that they're hiding the truth about Simon would make this especially difficult -- not only has this interloper cousin of dubious credentials made an attempt to steal Latchetts and not been punished for it, but the real heir died under mysterious circumstances while he was at the quarry with Brat. It wouldn't be long before people started wondering if Brat had killed Simon and then married Eleanor to cement his hold on Latchetts. Eleanor might try to ignore it, and the Pecks would be on their side, but still, damn -- that's a lot to go up against!

[helenajust.livejournal.com]

Good points, sonetka, thanks. Hadn't thought of that aspect!

[penguineggs.livejournal.com]

That's always been one of my big peeves about the ending; it's the obvious thing for the neighbours to think and it does have the problem it's going to poison their lives if they aren't careful, and absent the stylograph it can never be resolved.

[helenajust.livejournal.com]

Well yes, except that if Brat doesn't inherit the property then the motive isn't there. I do think that the suggestion that they were fooling around together, exploring the quarry or whatever, would be believed, because remember that only Brat and the family knew how much Simon hated him. He was careful not to let that be seen generally.

[nineveh-uk.livejournal.com]

I wonder whether had Brat not turned up, Simon would eventually have been caught in something else? I feel that Peggy Gates is jolly lucky she was in love with Simon and has a canny father, and for both these reasons presumably hasn't slept with him, and thus he's not had any reason to put her out of the way once a better prospect came along.

[penguineggs.livejournal.com]

If Eleanor inherits the property and marries Brat, that's almost as good as motives go, and means Eleanor gets dragged in either as co-conspirator or accessory.

[sonetka.livejournal.com]

In terms of his legal position, it's even better than his original one -- no matter who he is, he's legitimately married to the legitimate owner, which means that spousal privilege is now in the mix as well. Clearly this suspicious dark horse decided to infiltrate himself into a trusting family, and was welcomed by all of them, especially the naive Simon, who was overjoyed that Patrick had come home. But soon cracks began to show in Brat's facade. Simon began to develop suspicions that he had been robbed, and Brat had to get him out of the way before he could tell anyone else about it. Result: an evening spent plying the innocent Simon with drink, a "spontaneous" question about whether or not there was water at hte bottom of the quarry, and before you know it, Simon has been quietly pushed over the side and ... OK, it falls apart there since the sensible thing for a guilty Brat to do would be to be quiet and keep on being Patrick, but people love believing the worst and they'd find a way to explain it somehow.

[antisoppist.livejournal.com]

Oh that is brilliantly awful!

What happens about whotsisface whose idea it was? Does Brat carry on paying him for the rest of his life or does it stop once Brat is revealed not to be Patrick and has not won the estate? And if he marries Eleanor and does gain the estate, might not further requests for cash subsequently emerge? After all Brat would *owe him* and there's always the threat of selling the story to the press/the police.

[sonetka.livejournal.com]

I can't imagine Alec Loding will get any more out of Brat no matter what happens -- he's in Brat's debt now, since Brat hid Loding's identity when he could easily have pointed to him and possibly gotten him into serious legal trouble. And if Brat marries Eleanor, she seems like the type who keeps or at least oversees the keeping of her own books; there's no way substantial amounts of cash would disappear without her knowing, and given her attitude at the end of the book, she might well tell Loding to go ahead and sell the story if he wants, knowing that it will compromise him as much as Brat and that not being a friendless orphan who happened to discover his birth family in the process, he'll be regarded much less sympathetically.

In the village, of course, they'll say that Brat's revelation of who he was was actually a double-cross so that he could get out of paying Loding and still get the estate after murdering the innocent Simon and marrying the inexplicably besotted Eleanor (strange how women always fall for these unsavoury types, isn't it?) Since Eleanor couldn't inherit without Simon's death, and Brat couldn't have shaken off his blackmail obligations and married the owner of Latchetts while Simon was alive -- voila, IT WAS MURDER!

[penguineggs.livejournal.com]

And so Miss Marple would have foretold.

[nineveh-uk.livejournal.com]

As far as both general common sense and morality go, George Peck seems to rank low among fictional vicars in English villages (and as Blackadder says, that's up against some pretty stiff competition).

[antisoppist.livejournal.com]

I know someone who was asked to translate an Ibsen play (can't remember which one) to serve as a basis for someone else to produce a stage version. She said she wasn't credited but she didn't care at the time because it was the first literary translation job she'd ever had and that the theatre people were surprised how much swearing there was in her version compared to previous translations.

I have never seen any Ibsen and I didn't do it at university because he was combined with Strindberg and we were painfully reading Röda Rummet round the class in Swedish lessons at the time and that was quite enough of him. I did 1950s and 1960s Scandinavian literature in which everyone was mad instead.

[nineveh-uk.livejournal.com]

There was quite a lot of swearing at the start of this one...

I have managed to avoid Strindberg entirely so far, and you are giving me no incentive to change this!