Henrik Ibsen’s historically seminal, iconoclastic Ghosts was written in 1881 and instantly, bluntly rejected for local Norwegian theaters. The play is revived so infrequently that its appearance is in itself almost ghost-like. Yet, here’s “a new version by Mark O’Rowe” first seen in 2023 at Dublin’s Abbey Theatre.
But before getting to the pith of its new-version-ness, what’s more immediately pressing are the brilliant performances by Lily Rabe as tough-minded, inflexible businesswoman Helena Alving and Levon Hawke as Mrs. Alving’s severely ill son, Oswald. Equally important, their cameo-etched performances are guided by Jack O’Brien.
As victims of an eventual, irreversible mother-son dissolution, the pair forge an uncontestable theatrical bond. Rabe, straight-backed and taut, is a woman who suddenly comes to doubt her well-honed self-possession. Hawke matches her as a son whose apparent profligacy has been so extreme he’s returned after a two-year absence to face a damning aftermath, a sunless future in a too infrequently sunny land.
[Read Roma Torre’s ★★★★☆ review here.]
The Rabe-Hawke playing is so fiercely intimate that audience members may begin to feel as if, uninvited, they’re peeking through one of set designer John Lee Beatty’s high, rain-soaked windows. The urge to look away may threaten to overtake them.
Rabe’s work in Ibsen’s unforgiving deathtrap isn’t unexpected. She’s established herself on the stage for some time, just one example being the fairly recent Merchant of Venice revival. On the other hand, Hawke makes an auspicious New York stage debut. He bears watching from now on.
So, to the production’s particular demands as laid out in the new version. Start with possibly O’Rowe’s primary worry: the dialogue. O’Rowe is aware that today’s theatergoers aren’t as widely verbose as Ibsen’s were. Put another way, contemporary audiences aren’t habitually as ready to sit still for prolixity. Quite often, they prefer the quick in-and-out. They’re used to television commercials.
His solution—and maybe a boon to actors when memorizing—is trimming speeches. The result: This three-act Ghost does its relentless haunting in 90 intermissionless minutes. The slicing may even improve proceedings for Mrs. Alving, since her no-nonsense approach to life on an isolated island off Norway’s coast includes saying what she has to say and no more than is necessary.
Otherwise, while making minor adjustments such as using the word “morphine” when “morphea” might have previously been favored, O’Rowe indulges in one extensive as well as mystifying elimination. Of all things, he excises the word “ghosts.” Ibsen had Helena Alving talk several times about ghosts. She senses them returning, their objective to inflict next generations with destructive behaviors.
In O’Rowe’s new version she never utters the word “ghosts” or its singular. At least, I never heard it. Thinking, however, that I might have missed something even while listening for it, I checked O’Rowe’s script and found “ghosts” highlighted only on the title and the word “ghost” completely missing.
Why does he resort to such an odd notion? The disappearance from Ibsen’s text undermines Helena Alving’s core beliefs, her core convictions—other worldly as they may be in a staunch realist. Does O’Rowe consider today’s population less taken with the other world, whatever that might be, and so not inclined to listen to it, to honor it?
Everywhere else in this Ghosts for 2025 O’Rowe remains true to the realist Mrs. Alving’s hold on her beliefs, on her convictions as they’re heard. Indeed, she’s a handy example for the sometimes-expressed contention—a generalization—that women are forced to be life’s realists so that men can pursue their lives as true romantics.
This pertains not only between Mrs. Alving and Oswald but among the other Norway island inhabitants and visitors. The most contentious, the most hardened romantic is Pastor Manders (Billy Crudup, perhaps overdirected by O’Brien), presented by Ibsen as a handy foil, as Mrs. Alving’s foolishly obstinate philosophical opposite.
He’s a cleric who might be called a victim of the romance of religion, hewing to certain Biblical dictates even when they fly in the face of human cruelty. They certainly do when Mrs. Alving insists her husband was a philanderer and alcoholic not deserving of the obedience that Pastor adamantly and fulsomely maintains is a husband’s uncontestable right.
O’Rowe is true, too, to Mrs. Alving’s housemaid Regina (Ella Beatty), who’s always proper while keeping a demure eye on Oswald. (Rabid theatergoers may notice that Tracy Letts borrows the complication adversely affecting Oswald and Ella for his Pulitzer Prize-winning August: Osage County.) O’Rowe also allows Ella’s marauding father, Engstrand (Hamish Linklater, also perhaps overdirected by O’Brien), his unadulterated coarseness. He alters nothing when Engstrand attempts, not with great success, to curry favor with Mrs. Alving by working hard on the about-to-open orphanage she’s naming after her errant husband as a way of dismissing his memory once and for all.
Whatever else can be judged about this Ghosts—much good can be—it inarguably proves the Rabe and Hawke interpretations are extremely worth seeing and long remembering.
A final biographical note not in the program bios: Rabe’s parents are David Rabe and Jill Clayburgh, Hawke’s parents are Ethan Hawke and Uma Thurman, Beatty’s parents are Warren Beatty and Annette Benning, Linklater’s mother is renowned vocal coach Kristen Linklater. In other words, it looks as if acting dynasties are developing even as Ghosts roams these latest boards.
Ghosts opened March 10, 2025, at the Mitzi E. Newhouse Theater and runs through April 26. Tickets and information: lct.org
