Henrik Ibsen

From Pillars of Society to John Gabriel Borkman, Ibsen's plays had followed each other at regular intervals of two years, save when his indignation over the abuse heaped upon Ghosts reduced to a single year the interval between that play and An Enemy of the People. John Gabriel Borkman having appeared in 1896, its successor was expected in 1898; but Christmas came and brought no rumour of a new play. In a man now over seventy, this breach of a long-established habit seemed ominous. The new National Theatre in Christiania was opened in September of the following year; and when I then met Ibsen (for the last time) he told me that he was actually at work on a new play, which he thought of calling a "Dramatic Epilogue." "He wrote When We Dead Awaken," says Dr. Elias, "with such labour and such passionate agitation, so spasmodically and so feverishly, that those around him were almost alarmed. He must get on with it, he must get on He seemed to hear the beating of dark pinions over his head. He seemed to feel the grim Visitant, who had accompanied Alfred Allmers on the mountain paths, already standing behind him with uplifted hand. His relatives are firmly convinced that he knew quite clearly that this would be his last play, that he was to write no more. And soon the blow fell."

Years after her husband's death, Helene Alving is preparing to open an orphanage in his honor. With the arrival of an old friend, Pastor Manders, and her son, Oswald, the carefully guarded secrets Mrs. Alving has been keeping about her husband begin to unravel. As the sins of the father, and their consequences, become painfully clear, Mrs. Alving is left to question her life, her relationships, and whether or not she will ever be able to escape the spectres of the past. Adapted for performance by playwright Niclas Olson, Ibsen's GHOSTS is revived in a powerful and startling new version. (3M, 2W)