Why ask for the sun, when I've given you the stars?

To prove my point about Ibsen, here's my review of the Berkeley Rep's Ghosts from a year or so ago (the years, how they jumble together. . . .): I found the evening a mixed bag. There are some powerful performances and moments, but a lot of weak ones as well. I think they needed to think a little more deeply about how to present Ibsen to a Berkeley audience. Pastor Manders (James Carpenter -- OK -- I just realized he's the guy who was so outstanding in The Master Builder -- so as I surmised it was the direction of him in Ghosts that was at fault), the voice of social convention, was pretty much a foolish, dried-up prig, and that's a traditional interpretation that was well performed, but it just doesn't work for a contemporary audience. When a clergyman starts talking about duty (especially wifely duty) and what others will think, a Berkeley audience is just going to laugh at him. If there's no sense of power or reason behind what he says, where's the drama? We're just patting ourselves on the back for laughing at him and wondering why Mrs. Alving listens to him. He should at least be goodlooking enough and unconsciously seductive enough (which is how successful preachers are) for us to understand why Mrs. Alving ever found him so attractive. If they had thought of him as an aging hippy, I think that would have conveyed the right blend of idealism, foolishness, and sanctimony. They could have adjusted the translation so that instead of talking about duty (a cue for laughter) he talked about "social responsibility" -- it's another way of saying the same thing that would have given Manders's point of view a little more credibility with a contemporary audience. The man playing Jakob Engstrand (Brian Keith Russell) was pretty much a complete failure at conveying the man's greedy calculations and his whining manipulation and his menacing presence. He just seemed like a fairly nice guy who was trying to watch out for number one. You don't really get that this is someone who's trying to prostitute his daughter (well, stepdaughter, but still) and who burns down the orphanage to blackmail the Pastor (and again, a contemporary audience is only going to be pleased to see the Pastor hoodwinked). I also am not sure the audience really got the nature of the sailor's home he's trying to set up (even though they kept referring to it as a "seamen's home"; I guess they hoped the pun would make it all clear). The daughter Regina (Emily Ackermann) was fine but they (especially the son) keep describing her as a robust and vital and shapely young woman, and though she has an offbeat kind of goodlooks she just isn't that type. The last time I saw Ghosts Cherry Jones was in that role and she's more the type -- a big strapping healthy girl. Mrs. Alving (Ellen McLaughlin) was powerful and gave a ferocious and compelling performance, but I wasn't entirely convinced by some of her choices -- especially at the end, where she's throwing herself around and hurling the morphine -- she just comes off as too strong for us to understand why she would go back to her husband, why she would cover up her husband's real life, and why she would be torn about her son's demand for euthanasia. I've always pictured her at the end as physically constricted and almost bound, not throwing herself on the floor writhing. The son (Davis Duffield) was fine, though for some reason he played the entire second half shirtless (though he keeps talking about the cold -- is this meant to convey a high fever?) and I kept wondering what weird vanity or lack of vanity (he's not buff, which he shouldn't be for the part) was at play here and why he didn't shave the hairy patches on his back. The staging of his scenes with Regina was too physical and almost absurdly overdone, and there wasn't enough irony in his confrontation with the pastor about the immoral lives of the artists -- he already knows he has syphilis, he should be a lot more tentative with Regina and should be trying to convince himself as well as the pastor of the purity of the artists' lives. Again this argument is a stacked deck for us, so you need to play the scene for something other than the social views presented. The initial set, some large bare walls and a few basic pieces of furniture, was pretty ineffective; there's no sense of suffocation or tradition because it's too large and too bare. Put a looming picture of the Captain on the wall or something! After the orphanage burns they lift the walls and the rest is played against the large back wall with a flame-like and semi-abstract painting of bodies in reds, pinks, and oranges -- it tied in Oswald's painting and the fire and the syphilis very well. The music was mostly absurdly melodramatic (with lighting to match) though at the end they played a conventionally effective but weirdly anachronistic sort of alt rock song. It kind of worked but was more distracting than persuasive. Look, if someone gives you a ticket, go -- it's a fairly solid though conventional production of Ibsen, so if you're thirsting for Ibsen it's worth it.