Ghosts – Henrik Ibsen adapted by Mike Poulton

An imagined video from Regina, uploaded to her favourite social media site, where she fantasizes about going to Paris with Osvald and perhaps finding work and a place to live.  

An imagined letter from Engstrand to a real estate agent, November 10th, where he is enquiring about a harbour front property.  

Dear Sirs

I wanna ask about the place on the waterfront, Little Harbour Street.  It’s got one of your signs on it.  I cut the picture out from your ad – it’s the one circled.   Now I reckon I can afford the down payment they’re asking for and I’ve got some money put by so I can easily pay the rest in installments.

I would be planning to turn it into a hostel for sailors.  You know, three or four beds in a room.  That’d be all right, wouldn’t it?  I already have a contact in the parish who can sort out the licence for drink and entertainment.  Sailors need to be able to have a few drinks and some fun when they’re back in port.  What do you think?  Sound like a good idea to you?

Yours hopefully

Jacob Engstrand

“A Day in the Life”, taking you further into the hearts and minds of the characters.  An imagined piece from Osvald – sharing his thoughts on Manders – uploaded to his favourite social media site, of course!

Imagine that you’re part of an audience out for an evening’s entertainment. It’s July 14 1914, you’re at the Haymarket Theatre in the West End of London. You’re about to see a performance of Henrik Ibsen’s Ghosts.  There’s a buzz of expectation in the audience.  Why is that?

The play was written in 1881.  This is the first ever public performance in England.  Ghosts has been banned for public performance in England for 33 years.

Ibsen wrote Ghosts as a scathing commentary on the morality of the society in which he lived.  The play deals with a raft of issues that just weren’t mentioned in polite (or any sort of) society.  Considered so shocking when first written it was banned virtually everywhere in Europe.

Ghosts is about the relationship between Helene Alving and her son Oswald … between Regina and her father Engstrand … and between Helen and Pastor Manders, who have been close acquaintances for a long time.  It’s also about all of their relationships with Captain Alving.  He doesn’t appear in the play but casts a long shadow over it.

Henrik Ibsen is not the first to write tales about powerful Scandinavian characters.  They go back well over 1000 years – starting from Beowulf, the great Norse saga. There have been great stories about the darkness in Scandinavia for a long time.

Ibsen took those compelling but rather long Norse sagas – a dramatic storytelling tradition – and distilled them down into a series of compact stories.  You could make a very good case that Henrik Ibsen is the Godfather of the current phenomena of BBC4 Scandi-Noir drama.

John McCormick
Director