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g h o s t s
by henrik ibsen
reviews
GHOSTS - Mad Cow Theatre
June 2002 - Mary Jo Caruso
It's no easy feat to interest a modern Florida audience in a 19th century Norwegian family run askew, but the Mad Cow Theatre Company richly succeeds with its production of Henrik Ibsen's drama, Ghosts. Even those of us who barely want to spend a minute with our own dysfunctional families will be drawn to the Alving family as Ibsen depicts them spending a winter afternoon digging skeletons out of their closet. (Not they really dig for them; they kind of just fall out on their own.)
Helen Alving has funded the construction of the new town orphanage on behalf of her late husband, the esteemed Captain Alving. The orphanage is scheduled to open tomorrow and the town pastor, an old family friend, visits the Alving home to review plans. Engstrand, a local carpenter working on the orphanage, stops by to talk business with the pastor and future plans with his daughter Regina, the Alving household maid. And the Alving's son, Osvald, has just returned from Paris where he spent years studying and working in the arts.
In the messy network of these characters¹ interactions the yarn of the troubled past begins to unravel.
The glue of the Alving household and the magic of the production is Helen Alving, as played by Kim Crow. Crow embodies Ibsen's tragic heroine so completely that often with a mere glance, a nod of her head, even an intake of breath, she draws the audience out of its twenty-first century reality and into her stifling Norwegian sitting room. And despite the tragedy inherent in Ibsen's writing, Crow never ventures into melodrama or plays Helen as a victim or a martyr. When Crow is onstage, no one shifts in a seat, fumbles with a program, fidgets with a candy wrapper or even stops to scratch an itch.
Crow's supporting cast is consistent. Rick Stanley's Pastor Manders expertly captures misguided 19th century propriety and Natalie Weiss' Regina is believable as her ethics shift with circumstance. Christopher Lee Gibson as Engstrand and Stephen Middleton as Osvald do cross into melodrama on occasion, but on the whole capture the duplicity of their characters.
By the time the Mad Cow performance was done, I felt truly immersed in the world of the play. Of course, this led me to thank my stars that the "ghosts" in my life are of a more bearable magnitude. But most importantly, Mad Cow gives audiences a renewed appreciation for Ibsen's writing - a record of human dynamics that transcends Norway in the 1800s and reaches Florida in the millenium. No easy feat indeed.
June 2002 - Mary Jo Caruso
It's no easy feat to interest a modern Florida audience in a 19th century Norwegian family run askew, but the Mad Cow Theatre Company richly succeeds with its production of Henrik Ibsen's drama, Ghosts. Even those of us who barely want to spend a minute with our own dysfunctional families will be drawn to the Alving family as Ibsen depicts them spending a winter afternoon digging skeletons out of their closet. (Not they really dig for them; they kind of just fall out on their own.)
Helen Alving has funded the construction of the new town orphanage on behalf of her late husband, the esteemed Captain Alving. The orphanage is scheduled to open tomorrow and the town pastor, an old family friend, visits the Alving home to review plans. Engstrand, a local carpenter working on the orphanage, stops by to talk business with the pastor and future plans with his daughter Regina, the Alving household maid. And the Alving's son, Osvald, has just returned from Paris where he spent years studying and working in the arts.
In the messy network of these characters¹ interactions the yarn of the troubled past begins to unravel.
The glue of the Alving household and the magic of the production is Helen Alving, as played by Kim Crow. Crow embodies Ibsen's tragic heroine so completely that often with a mere glance, a nod of her head, even an intake of breath, she draws the audience out of its twenty-first century reality and into her stifling Norwegian sitting room. And despite the tragedy inherent in Ibsen's writing, Crow never ventures into melodrama or plays Helen as a victim or a martyr. When Crow is onstage, no one shifts in a seat, fumbles with a program, fidgets with a candy wrapper or even stops to scratch an itch.
Crow's supporting cast is consistent. Rick Stanley's Pastor Manders expertly captures misguided 19th century propriety and Natalie Weiss' Regina is believable as her ethics shift with circumstance. Christopher Lee Gibson as Engstrand and Stephen Middleton as Osvald do cross into melodrama on occasion, but on the whole capture the duplicity of their characters.
By the time the Mad Cow performance was done, I felt truly immersed in the world of the play. Of course, this led me to thank my stars that the "ghosts" in my life are of a more bearable magnitude. But most importantly, Mad Cow gives audiences a renewed appreciation for Ibsen's writing - a record of human dynamics that transcends Norway in the 1800s and reaches Florida in the millenium. No easy feat indeed.
GHOSTS
by Henrik Ibsen
translation by Nicholas Rudall
direction Alan Bruun
set design William Elliott
lighting design William Elliott
costume design Rebecca Baygents
stage manager Heather Fleming
Featuring
Kim Crow* as Helene Alving
Christopher Lee Gibson as Engstrand
Stephan Middleton as Osvald
Rick Stanley as Pastor Manders
Natalie Weiss as Regina
by Henrik Ibsen
translation by Nicholas Rudall
direction Alan Bruun
set design William Elliott
lighting design William Elliott
costume design Rebecca Baygents
stage manager Heather Fleming
Featuring
Kim Crow* as Helene Alving
Christopher Lee Gibson as Engstrand
Stephan Middleton as Osvald
Rick Stanley as Pastor Manders
Natalie Weiss as Regina
*appearing courtesy of Actor's Equity
(excerpts) By Elizabeth Maupin Sentinel Theater Critic
June 11, 2002
Ghosts is a play of our time. And it's a play of another time altogether.
Henrik Ibsen's drama about duty and guilt and free thinking in 1880s Norway doesn't quite make the leap to the 21st century. But if you're willing to journey back in time to meet it, Mad Cow Theatre's handsome little production will take you on a thought-provoking ride.
Theatergoers may recognize Ibsen as the father of two distinctively modern women: Hedda Gabler, who kills herself rather than adjust to a bourgeois life, and Nora Helmer, who escapes a stifling marriage in A Doll's House by walking out the door. Far fewer know Ghosts' Helene Alving, who refuses to run away from tragedy and instead stares it straight in the eye.
In Ghosts, Mrs. Alving's prison is apparent from the moment you see her comfortable little conservatory (designed by the masterly William Elliott), with its Oriental rug, its wrought-iron garden furniture, its chaise and its orchids and the pretty white bars that keep all of it protected from the cold and the fog and the rain.
There Helene Alving (Kim Crow) is planning to celebrate the happiest of days: An orphanage she has paid for is about to be dedicated to her illustrious late husband, and her beloved artist son Osvald (Stephen Middleton) is home from bohemian Paris for a good long stay.
Mrs. Alving is prepared to stand up to the warnings of her old friend and adviser Pastor Manders (Rick Stanley), who disapproves of Osvald'sfreewheeling lifestyle and even of the books she keeps on her table. She's willing to admit to Pastor Manders that her celebrated husband was not the man he appeared to be. Only when Mrs. Alving discovers that the sins of the father have been passed on to the son does her carefully constructed shell crack open and her world turn to dust.
Kim Crow, a Sarasota-area actress brought in to play Mrs. Alving, makes a matron with intelligence and crust, a woman with enough fortitude to do what needs to be done and enough self-knowledge to be bemused by doing it.
... There's no question that modern sensibilities may find Ghosts a strange brew, with its society frozen by convention and tied down by its sense of what it ought to do. Still, Mrs. Alving remains singular among Ibsen's extraordinary women. Maybe it's hard to imagine yourself facing long-forgotten crises in the damp Norwegian cold. But strip away the 19th-century trappings, and Helene Alving stands tall.
Elizabeth Maupin can be reached at emaupin@orlandosentinel.com or
407-420-5426. Copyright © 2002, Orlando Sentinel
