Ghosts, a CurtainUp review

Ibsen's Ghosts at BAM
By Les Gutman

A few years ago, I saw Andrei Serban's production of Hamlet at The Public Theater, in which the ghost of Hamlet's father was rendered in triplicate. I wondered then why that was and found no satisfactory resolution. Ibsen employed the plural, "ghosts," in his title, referring to that of the senior Mr. Alving, late husband of Helene Alving (Pernilla August) and father of Osvald (Jonas Malmsjö),and the maid with whom he sexually cavorted under their roof. We now have Ingmar Bergman's production of Ghosts which, depending on how we count, exposes two or three additional ghosts.

Bergman has made up Osvald to look like a ghost (pasty white face makeup, a lesion in his forehead and grayish costume) and, in the first half of the play in particular, has him behave like one. When we first see him, he has been obscured by the back of a sofa in the Alving parlor, until a stage turntable rotates him into view. (It's the only excuse for the turntable, which becomes cumbersome when used thereafter.) During Mrs. Alving's lengthy sit-down with Pastor Manders (Jan Malmsjö), Osvald periodically slinks through the periphery of the room unobserved. Before the intermission, when Osvald's randy behavior with Regine Engstrad (Angela Kovács) conjures up with father's misdeeds, Bergman doesn't let the action occur offstage (as Ibsen did); he brings it into view. But what are we seeing? Is it the real, spectral-appearing Osvald? Or is it a demon?

It's a fascinating twist introduced by Mr. Bergman, whose announcement that this is his final stage play ("...At 85 years of age and after 60 working years, 126 dramatic events, 50 films for both TV and screen, 49 radio plays, and a number of books and scripts, I feel that I can bring my career to an end -- and I wish to complete it while I can walk out of the theater on my own.") adds to the appeal of this production. And it's not the only clever input Bergman has added to the play. But some of his tinkering strikes me as less successful, hence two other lurking ghosts: Ibsen himself (Bergman makes it clear in program notes he is very much aware of this presence) and Ibsen's contemporary and Scandinaviananavian playwright Strindberg (some of whose dialogue Bergman has massaged into this play).

At the root of the problem is a misconception of cause and effect, and thus of the significance of Ibsen's play in which the past informs the future. It is true, famously, that Ghosts was a shocker when unveiled. And thus Bergman judged that he needed to translate that sort of scandal into 21st Century terms. In that (bringing to the surface that which was veiled a century ago), he is wrong, and comes up short in any event. The secrets and lies (to steal an expression from Mike Leigh) of the Alvings don't require explicit exposure to affect us, and the motivations to which Bergman gives short-shrift in this adaptation deprive the play of a good deal of its own impact.

This production nonetheless treats us to some astonishing performances. In particular, the expressive Ms. August is ravishing, in the most powerful definition of the term, and Jonas Malmsjö's Osvald is harrowing. Bergman says his version of Pastor Manders is "no longer a clerical parody. He is a frightened and emotionally confused human being". Would that it were so: Jan Malmsjö portrays him mostly as a clown, an impression driven home by an outlandish purple costume that seems like it was borrowed from The Joker in Batman.

My expressions of dissatisfaction shouldn't undercut Bergman's experiment. It's revelatory, at the sunset of his career, in its willingness to rethink and risk. And it underscores the treasure in its source.
Harvey Theater, 651 Fulton Street, Brooklyn (Ashland/Rockwell)
Telephone: (718) 636-4100
June 10 - 14, 2003
English translation (simultaneous via headsets) by Charlotte Barslund
Reviewed by Les Gutman based on 6/12/03 performance