If the title of Ibsen’s 1881 tragedy about toxic family inheritance stands as a metaphor for the way the past continues to haunt us, this production makes that idea literal. It begins with the lighting of candles, rather like the start of a séance, bringing characters to life before they are snuffed out at the end.
A play that dealt in bold subject matter for its time (from venereal disease and incest to euthanasia and critiques of the nuclear family), it sounds crisply modern in Joe Hill-Gibbins’ adaptation. Also directing, he divests the drama of its naturalistic qualities.
Helene Alving (Hattie Morahan) is a trembling mother and seems as if she is in a state of mourning at the beginning, before she learns that her son, Osvald (Stuart Thompson), a one-time artist, is now fatally infected with syphilis. He is played with a zombie-like calmness at times, lying face down on the ground, and rising to say his lines, like the undead.
The elder two men are both roguish fathers, of sorts: Jacob Engstrand (Greg Hicks), who assumes the paternal role to Helene’s maid, Regine (Sarah Slimani), is a grasping wretch. Pastor Manders (Paul Hilton), called “Father” here, does not wear a collar and is less a man of the cloth than an unpredictable, self-denying, morally slippery man, pouncing on Helene like a lover even while denying his passion for her.
Mrs Alving’s country house is squeezed into a single space, timeless and psychological. Rosanna Vize’s set is dominated by an umbilical red shaggy carpet (characters pad through it in bare feet). It has overtly sexual overtones but also gestures at Osvald’s infection, vividly described as crushed red velvet in his brain. An already claustrophobic play becomes almost smothering in this reduced space, and much more clearly a psychodrama.
But the production is rather thudding, even awkwardly comical at times – a gong sounds when the penny drops for Manders over Regine and Osvald’s relationship, and Osvald appears in shorts to hammer home he is a little boy lost who refers to Helene as “mummy”.
The humour stops us from plumbing the play’s emotional depths and the scenes of contained passion do not have enough potency. Still, the cast is strong and Morahan is magnificent in her maternal desperation. Ultimately, it is a production full of clever concepts: I walked away in admiration rather than devastated by its closing moments.
• At Sam Wanamaker Playhouse, London, until 28 January
