Productions of Ibsen’s 1881 play are either sublime or awful: this one, adapted and directed by Joe Hill-Gibbins, is very, very good indeed. Hattie Morahan leads a fine cast and brings her flair for tamped-down, volcanic emotion to the part of Helene Alving, trying to control the damage her terrible sea-captain husband wreaked on her and his offspring.
The action is condensed into 100 atmospheric minutes, though the candle lighting of this venue proves a slightly-too-obvious expression of the play’s metaphors of light and darkness. The red fur coating the set apparently represents the diseased mind of Helene’s son Osvald, who remains onstage whether he’s in a scene or not, a symbolic victim of the twin vices of moral corruption and bourgeois repression. The fur also adds to the mood of thwarted sensuality as characters wrestle on it or pad barefoot across it.
