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THE Spectra In the 1881 play by Henrik Ibsen, are not supernatural variety – no bumps in the night or scary things. However, you might assume as much if you heard the public haffling in the new captivating version of Gary Owen, led by Siphluante Excellent Callum Scott Howells. It is something that, in the hands of Owen and the director Rachel O'riordan, this sorry story of secrets and lies always has the power to shock.
No theater would stage Ibsen's Corusque play during his first writing, managers moving away from the frank treatment of incest, venereal disease and social hypocrisy. Owen deletes some of the details so that the drama works in a contemporary context. Thus, when the young Oswald – Oz here – returns to his family home to mark the opening of a charitable institution in the name of his deceased father, he does not suffer from inherited syphilis. (In the original of Ibsen, it was a physical symptom of the damage transmitted by the father to his son.) Instead, Owen focuses on the psychological scars that the dead man inflicted on all those present and to the toxic heritage of secrets and abuses.
At first, it's bitterly funny. Scott Howells's Oz, a bristled and sullen presence, is won in the living room in his pants, dropping liners with perfect timing. “Don't worry, that's not all for me”, cheerfully chirping when he goes to his room with a few vintage bottles of wine. He and his mother, Helena, an Smurfit Victoria, fragile and fragile, Spar and Smolder, while Oz clearly made his resentment to be sent back to school at an early age. But gradually, truths slip: the sharp language of Oz comes from a deep desire and a painful desire for affection; Helena's defensive was born years to arm against a knitting and coercive husband. And then when the young maid of Oz and Helena Reggie, played with fierce integrity by Patricia Allison, becomes close, a terrible truth emerges.
In this overhaul, we acutely feel the theme of parenthood: in the story of Helena, in the requirements of local manufacturer Jacob (Deka Walmsley), which has helped to cover a scandal in the family by taking reggie as its own and now wants its contributions, and to the nature of the institution that opens. In the text of Ibsen, it is an orphanage, it is here a hospital for sick children. However, we lose part of the wider criticism. The original is partly a large side against generalized social hypocrisy. When we learn that Helena has once tried to flee her toxic marriage but was returned by Pastor Manders (who becomes here the lawyer Suave Andersen), it is more to do with personal history between them than the social opprobrium.
There is an element of melodrama in production and it takes a while to settle down: initially the thorny conversation between Helena and Andersen of Rhashan Stone feels sticky and overwhelmed by the exhibition. But they are still fascinating moral and emotional roller coaster. The tense production of O'Riordan is closer to the tension on the symbolic set of Merle Hensel: a smart leather sofa and an expensive drinking cabinet drift in the backdrop of a huge translucent window, beyond which the mist swallows and swirls. And looming everything are images of obstacles on the wall of the dead man, which haunts everyone on stage.
★★★★ ☆
On May 10, Lyric.co.uk
