Behind the Scenes

Open Space Theatre Company Ibsen's work has been dismissed as "goblins, gloom and grisly diseases". He is also the founder of modern drama. Ghosts is about the sins of the fathers but also how the deadly hand of the past grips within a narrow, parochial society. 

In David Green's production everyone looks right: Mrs Alving, elegant in black silk; Pastor Manders, resembling Ibsen himself; Oswald, blond and gaunt. Try on some 19th century clothing. See how you feel in a long, dark, restricting gown or a three-piece suit with tails and a wing-collared shirt. 

In drama, as in life at the time, there is a tension between decorum and propriety on one hand and people's natural urges on the other. This is the confined world that the actors bring eloquently to life. As Mrs Alving, Yves Green has a natural dignity, with an ability to indicate the pain of her younger self. There were dramatic moments when she resembled Sarah Bernhardt. Paul Baker, as Pastor Manders, also has a dignity which keeps you guessing whether he is a good man or a shyster. 

Mike Davison manages to give Oswald the look and manner of someone who will soon be departing either this life or sanity. Cathy Gill's Regine is a decent girl with a faintly troubled air and stirrings of romance. As a servant she changes almost imperceptibly according to who she is talking to. 

This was a classy rendering of what has been called the first great tragedy written about middle class people in plain, everyday prose.