Ben
Brantley

April 12, 2015

So this is what all the fuss was about. Richard Eyre’s full-strength production of Ibsen’s “Ghosts,” which opened over the weekend at the Harvey Theater of the Brooklyn Academy of Music, allows you to feel the bruising force with which this drama assaulted unsuspecting audiences of the late 19th century. “Ghosts,” after all, remains the great historical example of a single play’s power to disturb. Its first productions left theatergoers reeling and revolted, with critics scrambling to outdo one another with expressions of disgust and derision, including The Daily Telegraph’s immortal characterization of the play as “an open drain; a loathsome sore unbandaged; a dirty act done publicly.” Cultural shock tremors tend to subside over the years, allowing later generations to chuckle at how squeamish and priggish their ancestors were. Then along comes a production like this “Ghosts,” adapted and directed by Mr. Eyre and starring a coruscating Lesley Manville, and the laughter dies in our throats. For what comes through so searingly in this version, from the Almeida Theater in London — possibly the best “Ghosts” you’ll ever see — is the Jehovah-like mercilessness of Ibsen’s indictment of a middle class that remains smug in an advanced state of decay. You realize, with a visceral jolt, that what unsettled this work’s early audiences weren’t just the play’s explicit references to unsavory matters like venereal disease.