THEATER REVIEW Ibsen's Ghosts

When executing a makeover on a classic, not only is it a good idea to first write your makeover and then fit the verbatim source material to the space remaining, but to apply your concept to both ends of the narrative throughout the development process. If you're not careful, your analogies stagger under the weight of the text they purport to explicate—in this case, Ibsen's shocking tale of a libertine patriarch whose legacy of corruption and hypocrisy brings misery to his descendents.

Greg Allen's analytical deconstruction for this Mary-Arrchie Theatre production begins promisingly, with a servant's "self-taught" French exhibiting the fluency afforded by the casting of a Montrealer in the part, and a character protesting the preponderance of "cheap theatrics" only to be corrected, "metatheatrics!" The second act attempts to sustain the intellectual level of the self-referential humor with a parlor lamp represented by a fixture known in stage jargon as a "ghost light" and a bottle of champagne, still bearing its price tag, allegedly purchased at the store downstairs from the Angel Island studio. Too often, however, the irony of personae musing over their "roles" in life gives way to standard-issue comedy shtick before reverting to straightforward tragic delivery for the last 20 minutes.

Allen's Neo-Futurist aesthetic mandates a communal approach possibly contributing to the stylistic dissonance in evidence on opening night. Stephen Walker's sanctimonious Pastor Manders and Catherine Lavoie's ambitious Regina eagerly embrace the anachronisms and exaggerations—Manders exclaiming "Oy vey!" or Regina shrieking in adolescent outrage—prevalent in improv-based drollery. Carolyn Hoerdemann's Mrs. Alving and Kirk Anderson's Engstrand, by contrast, offer their observations on the action in progress with never a wink or grimace to cue audience laughter. ( After describing the late Mr. Alving as "dissolute," Hoerdemann confides to us, "That's the word most translators use," with scholarly aplomb. ) Stranded between these warring tonal manifestos, Gage Wallace's Oswald cannot help but come off as unsure of his place in the universe, dramatic or factual.

What makes this drop-off in creative energy doubly disappointing is that Allen clearly wants to make a cohesive case for our widowed heroine having it within her power to rescue herself and her children from their unhappy fate. We see her reading Ibsen's plays and even stepping out of the stage picture to view her options as spectators do before sorrowfully regretting her inability—now, as in the past—to implement her new discoveries toward alleviating the suffering of innocents.