Ghosts Rose Theatre Kingston

If you’re looking for a show that’s going to provide you with laughter and merriment, then Ibsen’s timeless play, Ghosts, at The Rose Theatre, Kingston, is probably not for you. However, it still packs a punch with some fierce acting and slick direction.

Director Stephen Unwin will step down from his post as Artistic Director of The Rose after a five-year tenure, and having directed six Ibsen plays already, he leaves us with his translation of Ghosts before it goes on a six week UK tour.

The set, designed by Simon Higlett, takes inspiration from Edvard Munch’s work (most famous for his painting The Scream), and this is the first time the designs have been used since the 1906 Berlin production of Ghosts – which also happens to coincide with the one hundred and fiftieth anniversary of Munch’s birth. The large landscape at the back reveals a foreshadowing sunrise in the final scene of the play.

With such dark staging, you can be sure of the unrelenting misery that awaits you, but it’s Ibsen’s genius use of drama to highlight the oppression of women in the nineteenth century that you can’t help but marvel at. At first glance, you’d say the Alving family house was a home to a normal family, and yet as the play unfurls you find out about the lies, deceit, adultery and illness with which each character must battle.

Unwin’s direction is spot on, the climatic ending being the crux of the play, which is brilliantly played out by all the cast. Pip Donaghy’s Engstrand, a crippled, Scottish carpenter (whose accent depicts his relationship to daughter Regina), is one of the more light-hearted characters. Afflicted son Osvald, played by Mark Quartley, is a painter who returned from Paris an ill, alcoholic mess that embodies the ghost of his father, and leaves his mother (Kelly Hunter) to pick up the pieces as she struggles to cope with her fractured life. Patrick Drury, as hypocritical Pastor Manders, elicits stifled laughter of disbelief from the audience with his many quips such as “It is not a wife’s duty to judge her husband” and various other observations about growing up at the hands of maid Regina.

Ghosts is a dark but intense look at the pain of pursuing a happy family life, and the hidden debauchery, lies and deceit that sometimes comes with it.

Ghosts is playing The Rose Theatre, Kingston until 12 October 2013, and then tours the UK afterwards. For more information and tickets, see the Rose Theatre website.