Home. 12:28am. Went to see

Home. 12:28am. Went to see Ghosts at the Atheneaum – Brian was in it and Thom directed it. Why do I forget that Ibsen is da bomb? Or as Beth said: ‘Ibsen is my lover.’ I was sorta glad I’d put off reading Ghosts so I could be genuinely surprised by this play. So tight and economical – claustrophobic. And the cast did very well for the most part. Brian rocked. So did Leslie as Mrs. Alving. Heinrik Ibsen is an amazing dramatist and I hope someday I can create plays as concise and perfectly crafted as his. The mechanics of the plays – the way they are woven – like a tight percale sheet – it’s just amazing. Plus the unspoken spectre of syphillis (which is thought to be inherited) hits the audience a little harder in our post-AIDS culture. A excerpt from Ghosts: (Mrs. Alving to Mr. Manders in Act II)

I am frightened and timid, because I am obsessed by the presence of ghosts that I never can get rid of. I am half inclined to think we are all ghosts, Mr. Manders. It is not only what we have inherited from our fathers and mothers that exists again in us, but all sorts of old dead ideas and all kinds of old dead beliefs and things of that kind. They are not actually alive in us; but there they are dormant, all the same, and we can never be rid of them. Whenever I take up a newspaper and read it, I fancy I see ghosts creeping between the lines. There must be ghosts all over the world. They must be as countless as the grains of the sands, it seems to me. And we are so miserably afraid of the light, all of us.

Yeah Heinrik: nobody does it like you.


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