Sunday night saw the next installment in the Triad Stage season passes: Henrik Ibsen's dark and disturbing drama from the late, late 1800s Ghosts. I was wondering what I was in for upon reading some of the blurbs in the playbill, such as this one, my favorite:
“An open drain; a loathsome sore unbandaged; a dirty act done publicly; a lazar-house with all it doors and windows open…candid foulness…offensive cynicism…Ibsen’s melancholy and malodorous world…Absolutely loathsome and fetid…Gross, almost putrid decorum.”
–London’s Daily Telegraph, 1891, anonymous editorial
Wow, what the hell am I in for?
A dark and dreary play with such heavy topics as incest, lies, sexual infidelity, such advanced stage syphilis that mental status changes are quite evident, and the begging by a son to his own mother to kill him with an overdose of morphine. Quite the pick-me-up!
I don't even know how to describe this. A woman who, upon pressure from the pastor, stays with a husband against all common sense. Incestuous relations, kept secret for so long, finally ooze forth and taint all those involved. The disease that disturbs them, that mental disease and secret affliction that was passed from father to son, the advanced stage of disease that causes one to beg for their own death. So very dark and intense, and yet throughout the performance I sat there with an uncomfortable bewildered look upon my face. I understand that the theater is meant to provoke emotion and produce discussion, but this one really left me spent and exhausted.
Listen to some info from Triad Stage director Preston Lane on our local NPR station WFDD and their program Triad Arts Up Close: http://wfdd.org/audio/tauc/tauc0310.mp3
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