Mrs. Alving (Deborah Strang) and Oswald (J. Todd Adams) in "Ghosts"
Most families have secrets, but in director Michael Murrray's adaptation Henrik Ibsen's "Ghosts," the secrets are deadly. Deborah Strang gives a heart-wrenching performance as a woman who has sacrificed much and now must give up her only happiness.
We meet Mrs. Alving (Strang) on a happy day. Her only child, Oswald (J. Todd Adams), has returned home for the winter. Her friend and financial adviser, Pastor Manders (Joel Swetow), is in town to help dedicate an orphanage that Mrs. Alving has built in memory to her late husband, Captain Alving. The dedication will take place on the 10th anniversary of his death.
We already know something is amiss. The Alving's maid, Regina (played by Rebecca Mozo for opening weekend but thereafter by Jaimi Paige), has been visited by her often drunk father, Engstrand (Mark Bramhall). He wants her back because he has a new scheme, but she has plans. She is a bit too forward with both the pastor and Oswald, hoping that one will lead her to her own bit of fortune.
Yet we soon learn that the late Captain Alving wasn't a good father and husband. He was often drunk and whored; there is little doubt that Regina is actually his illegitimate offspring and Oswald's half-sister. Mrs. Alving once scandalized the town by leaving her husband, going to the pastor for spiritual and emotional comfort only to be told to stand by her man. Yet the cost of her return and the subsequent lies maintained were high. Her son soon reveals that he suffers from syphilis, most likely the sins of his father although he has been led to believe that his father was an upstanding man, a facade his mother was able to maintain by sending him away when he was very young.
Ibsen's play suggests that Oswald has congenital syphilis, contracted from his father via his mother who is asymptomatic and now Oswald has begun to show signs of chronic dementia and will become so disoriented and confused that he will need constant care.
This 1881 play was controversial during its time because although it doesn't name the disease, syphilis wasn't something one mentioned in polite society. In today's world, that might seem like a non-issue. Yet how does one address the problems and hardships and prevention is one doesn't talk about the problem openly?
In Los Angeles today, the problem might not be easy to imagine, with the likable Tom Hanks winning an Oscar for his portrayal of an AIDS-infected gay man in the 1993 movie "Philadelphia." On TV, there seems to be a disease-of-the-week, but there was a time when AIDS was the gay or African disease and people didn't talk about AIDS. Before AIDS, there were a host of sexually-transmitted diseases that people didn't talk about.
Ibsen's fellow Norwegian Edvard Munch painted a mother with a child who has a deformed face and a rash, addressing the problem of congenital syphilis ("Heritage," 1897-9). Ibsen and Munch were acquaintances; Munch painted several portraits of Ibsen.
Syphilis was not only a concern in Norway. Although Akira Kurosawa and Toshiro Mifune are best remembered for their samurai movies, in 1949, Kurosawa directed Mifune in the melodramatic "Shizukanaru Ketto" or "The Quiet Duel" in which Mifune plays a young doctor who contracts syphilis from the blood of a patient after he accidentally cuts himself during surgery. The doctor breaks off his engagement without explanation to his fiancee and braces himself for a cold and lonely life with an incurable disease.
It was only in the 1970s that the Tuskegee Study of Untreated Syphilis in the Negro ended due to public outcry. Beginning in 1932, the study started with 600 men, 399 of whom had the disease. Dr. David Feldshuh's 1992 play, "Miss Evers' Boys" about this experiment was later adapted into a 1997 HBO TV movie.
Yet in 2009, prime time TV shows such as "Grey's Anatomy," "House, M.D." and "Law & Order: SVU" have mentioned syphilis. The sensational aspect of Ibsen's play, "Ghosts," has been stripped away and what is left is a depiction of the destructiveness of lies and the nature of a mother's love for her suffering child.
Under the astute direction of Murray, Strang gives a devastating performance as a woman who has sacrificed all: her happiness and her youthful dreams, in order to preserve the idealized image of her husband, not just to save her own face, but mostly to give her son the illusion of a perfect family. Now she is asked by the one person she loves, Oswald, to help him die with dignity. Adams is by turns charming and youthfully rash, making the revelation of his impending death even more heartbreaking. Swetow's pastor is a brittle man, held captive by social expectations, the fear of scandal and looking ridiculous hold him hostage, giving Bramhall's crafty Engstrand an opportunity to profit.
While no longer addressing a taboo topic, Ibsen's play still reminds us of how little we have changed. Once it was syphilis, then it was AIDS. Will we react the same way in the future? One hopes not. Yet if we do, surely, there will be mothers who will make sacrifices such as the one facing Mrs. Alving.
"Ghosts," A Noise Within, 234 S. Brand Blvd. Glendale. Plays in repertory. $15-$44. Ends May 9.
For more articles by Jana J. Monji:
Director Michael Murray Breathes Life into Ibsen's Ghosts
Frost/Nixon: The Original Watergate Interviews
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