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

[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).