Review: Ghosts, Lyric Hammersmith - humourous, dark and tense
17/04/2025
Gary Owen's new version of Henrik Ibsen's Ghosts gives the play a contemporary setting, in a rural west country seaside location where low cloud ironically blocks the view from the large panoramic windows of Helena Alving's (Victoria Smurfit) minimalist lounge.
Story details have also been given a modern twist.
The orphanage Helena is building to honour her late husband in Ibsen's play is now a children's hospital. Jacob (Deka Walmsley) wants his daughter, Reggie (Patricia Allison) to leave Helena's employment and help him set up a holiday home renovation business rather than open a hotel for retired sailors. And syphilis becomes depression and anxiety.
Pastor Manders becomes Anderson (Rhashan Stone), a lawyer working for the charitable trust which will run the hospital. He's also an old flame of Helena's from before she married. Oswald or 'Oz' her son (Callum Scott Howells) is an actor rather than an artist whose career is currently on a down.
The script is contemporary and, particularly in the first half, witty with plenty of humorous lines.
However, it is the relationships where this version of Ghosts feels the most 'now'.
The performances and language is peppered more explicitly with unrequited and requited sexual tension. Everything is amped. Helena's late husband didn't just sleep around, drink and get the maid pregnant he used abuse as a form of cohersive control.
Victoria Smurfit's Helena is delicately flawed and complex and naturally shaped by the nature of her relationship with her late husband. She's lived in a state of survival and protection for so long she can't let go of those instincts.
But despite the comparative freedoms afforded to women in the 21st Century, she is still the victim of male judgement. She is the one having to explain and justify her decisions and behaviour to Anderson, Oz and Jacob. She is still on the receiving end of aggressive male anger.
From time to time the script feels a little too obviously engineered to deliver a laugh or audience reaction and just occasionally the performances risk veering towards cartoonish, but for the most part this is a satisfyingly pacey, humourous, dark, gripping and tense production.
I'm giving Ghosts ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
Ghosts, Lyric Hammersmith
A new version of Henrik Ibsen's play by Gary Owen
Directed by Rachel O'Riordan
Starring: Victoria Smurfitt, Patricia Allison, Callum Scott Howells, Rhasan Stone, and Deka Walmsley.
Running time: 2 hours and 30 minutes including an interval.
Booking until 10 May; for more information and to buy tickets, visit the Lyric Hammersmith website.
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