Ibsen’s “Ghosts” of long dead values

Currently, the Soul Pepper Theatre in Toronto’s distillery district is staging Ibsen’s Ghosts; thus one can safely dissect the hypocrisies of the 19^th century Norwegian bourgeoisie in the happy company of the 21^st century Canadian equivalent. Since the characters in the play are moral hypocrites, it is safe to say that no one in the audience will experience the shock of recognition. None of our pretences are so Biblical.

The play doesn’t work though and it’s only partly due to the staging. Few of the actors have the gravity of bearing that one expects in characters embedded in a societal regime of virtues constantly performed: they seem too loose, too easygoing. As played by Joseph Zeigler, Pastor Manders comes off a bit like John Candy playing a coach; the character as written is a hypocrite, but not a buffoon. Ibsen’s plays are about the individual’s struggle to be free of something overwhelming and powerful, so Manders has to be a commanding presence, but he often comes across more like a pest than a scourge. He’s a man out of time here, performing virtues for a different audience than ours. Many of his lines got laughs in Toronto, but none were written as punch lines.

But the fault might lie not in Soul Pepper’s stars but in ourselves. Ibsen is exceedingly difficult to perform straight to contemporary audiences, who might be more inclined to laugh than shudder. It’s an irony of history that Ibsen’s lacerating indictment of his society serves mainly to flatter our own. When Ghosts was first performed, it was called a “dirty deed done in public”; now he’s second only to Shakespeare in popularity and for a good reason: he reminds us how miserable it was to live under the values we’ve mostly rejected. He assures us that the Victorian regime of virtue was just play acting- no one could really live that way! He calls it out as a crippling denial of the life force, which one can be assured we don’t deny; just look at our credit card bills! For modern audiences, Ibsen the pugilist fights a battle that has already been won. He confirms our feminism, applauds our honesty about ourselves, and agrees with us about the ill effects of repression. He’s safe.

{Note: Without flattering myself that this post will bring about a deafening response from the commentariat, I’d still like to note that I’m currently restricting myself to an hour online per day, so will respond perhaps be a bit slow in my responses.}