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!)

[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.

[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.