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| Wesley Addy, Victor Garber, Beatrice Straight. |
GHOSTS [Dramatic
Revival] A: Henrik Ibsen; AD/D: Gene Feist; S: Holmes Easley; C: Sue A.
Robbins; L: R.S. Winkler; M: Philip Campanella; P: Roundabout Theatre Company;
T: Roundabout Theatre (OB); 3/13/73-5/27/73 (89)
Ibsen’s once controversial 1882 masterpiece about the blind
adherence to convention was acceptably, if unmemorably, performed in this Roundabout version
starring noteworthy thespians Beatrice Straight as Mrs. Alving and Wesley Addy as
Pastor Manders, with Victor Garber making his New York debut as Osvald. Staged
in the three-quarters round in the company’s cramped basement venue, the
production had an intimacy and “claustrophobic attitude” that served the play
well, according to Clive Barnes.
Most of the reviewers were glad to see Ghosts revived, but Martin Gottfried disdained the drama as “dumb,
dumb, dumb as only Ibsen, Ibsen can be.” He called the staging “only
semiprofessional,” laughed scornfully at Addy as a “silver-haired, beautifully
profiled, Barrymore ham,” saw interesting things in Victor Garber’s Osvald, and
felt Straight did what she could with a thankless role.
Nevertheless, most of the other reviews leaned positive. Douglas
Watt did pass on it as “competent, but rather bland,” seeing little chemistry
between Alving and Manders, but Barnes thought the production “more than
decent,” and considered the entire company strong, “with a lovely, tender and
very restrained performance” from Straight. Garber received a Theatre World
Award for his efforts.
2.
TR: Rolfe Fjelde; D: Leonard Shapiro; DS: Jerry Rojo; C:
Theodore Skipitares; P: New York Shakespeare Festival; T: Public Theater/Little
Theater (OB); 3/6/75-5/18/75 (37)
(No photos available)
The second Ghosts revival
of the early 1970s used an environmental approach, which was prevalent
in avant-garde theatre of the period, for this hotly debated interpretation. It
was a product of the Shaliko troupe, based at New York University, which Joe
Papp’s Public Theater offered a guest residency for a repertory of Ibsen’s play
and Brecht’s The Measures Taken. The
set was created by master environmentalist, Jerry Rojo, but the production was
scoffed at by the major critics. Edith Oliver, for example, thought that
neither director Leonard Shapiro nor designer Rojo had done “a thing for Ibsen.”
The seating was scattered all around the set in an
arrangement that cut off some parts of the acting area,
making it difficult for everyone to see everything. The environment represented a
19th-century house, cluttered with “a tasteless array of decorator-style
Victorian bric-a-bric,” according to Clive Barnes. The players acted over,
under, and around the audience. Walter Kerr had to quickly pull back his feet
when Regina (Jane Mandel), the maid, began to water a plant whose leaves lapped
over his toes.
The interpretation, which Kerr likened to “a Kung Fu version
of Ibsen’s play,” was a freewheeling one using as many unconventional tricks
and devices as possible. Barnes likened the result of the energetic performance
to “Grotowski-inspired chaos” that travestied the drama. He wrote that the production
had no specific “tone” or “sensibility toward the play,” and described the
acting as “ranting, screaming, ogling, mugging, whining and general
misbehaving.”
Mrs. Alving was played by Mary Zakrzewski as a sex-starved,
heavy-drinking slattern who, at one point, “makes a headlong dive at Manders
[Tom Crawley] . . . and kisses him with such cobra-like passion, slithering the
while, that he feels himself compelled to hurl her to the floor,” sneered Kerr. All in all, this was, he concluded, a “thoroughly mindless” revival.
