One of the spirits that haunts Henrik Ibsen's "Ghosts" is a little less scary than it would have been before the discovery of penicillin. There is still no sure cure for the others.
Everyman Theatre's sensitive, richly atmospheric production makes it easy to appreciate the original edge of an 1882 family drama that involves the specter of venereal disease, a topic not even hinted at in polite society, let alone onstage, before Ibsen dared.
Directed with a knowing touch by Donald Hicken, the staging also underlines issues of love, marital fidelity, duty and lifestyle that the playwright addressed or challenged. As much as we may think we're removed from late-19th century mores and expectations, awfully stubborn vestiges remain.
The play centers on the unfortunate Norwegian widow, Helene Alving (Deborah Hazlett), who has grown weary of all the high moral tone around her, and the hypocrisy that so often lurks behind it.
Helene deserves a better, simpler life, but the past keeps seeping through the doors of her country home, as relentlessly as the rain keeps falling outside. Drop by drop, as various truths emerge, her claustrophobic world gets even smaller.
In short order, we learn that Helene isn't as deferential as she is assumed to be, anymore than her late husband was as respectable as his reputation would have it. And their son, Osvald (Danny Gavigan), who has been living in wicked Paris, isn't quite as free and bohemian as he professes.
On the other hand, longtime family friend Pastor Manders (James Whalen) is exactly as upright and uptight as he appears. This law-and-order man just doesn't realize how much more vulnerable that rigidity makes him.
We can scoff at the sins-of-the-fathers notion that Helene embraces and that Osvald resists, but their emotions register with increasing weight as they face the implications. In the bittersweet finale, with its striking pathos, the ever-insightful Hazlett reaches an extraordinary level of poignancy.
Gavigan, looking like he could have stepped out of a vintage production of "La Boheme" (David Burdick designed the evocative costumes), is a persuasive Osvald, making even the more poetically ripe lines sound natural.
Whalen nails the role of the terribly preachy preacher, whose views on women and marriage sound all the more jarring given how they echo in some places to this day (the night I attended, several audience members practically talked back to him).
Bruce Randolph Nelson is in fine form as Jacob Engstrand, a crusty, crafty laborer with ties to the Alving household. And Sophie Hindenberger is effective as Jacob's slyly calculating daughter Regina.
Daniel Ettinger's beautifully appointed scenic design, complete with rainfall, provides a perfect platform for the interlocking issues in "Ghosts" to materialize.