Review by Simon Jenner, May 24th 2025
A father wants his daughter to return with him to a life of squalor. But he knows something to make that even more dangerous. An artist son is returning home from Paris to his mother in Norway: but not for happy reasons. When he meets the young woman, a maid in the house, sparks fly. But should they? And what hold does a Pastor have on that mother, or she on him? Sins of the father, mother, elders everywhere are visited on the young. Written in 1881, Ibsen’s Ghosts was banned for obscenity, including the UK. Using Richard Eyre’s fleet 2013 version (which won an Oliver, when premiered at the Almeida), it arrives at New Venture Theatre, Brighton directed by Jerry Lyne till May 31st.
Amelia Leigh, Sarah Tansey and Sebastian O’Driscoll-Henderson. Photo Credit: Strat Mastoris
Regina Enstrand (Amelia Leigh) maid of the grand family Aveling, resists her ne’er-do-well carpenter father Jacob (Robert J Shepherd) who wants her to look after his shady project of a seaman’s refuge. He’s recruited Pastor Manders (Alex Blyth) to his cause and cashflow. Blyth plays the self-deluding Manders as a smugly coercive Trollope prelate. He’s a study in how the repressed project fear as control. The way Blyth manouevres Helen Alving into agreeing to no insurance for an orphanage, built with her dead husband’s money, is bullying with incense. Shepherd’s wily, wheedling Enstrand secretes a crude-oil version of Manders’ rancid myrrh. Yet he can blackmail with the sublime.
Sarah Tansey’s Helene Alving dominates this production as a crumbling colossus: both revealing and revealed to. Protective towards Regina yet alarmed, Tansey’s all laisse-majéste to Shepherd’s watchful Enstrand. But with Manders there’s history and chemistry. Discovering her husband’s character at 19, Helene fled to the man she’d wanted to marry: theology student Manders. Who fearing reputation sends her straight back. He blandly surmises the husband reformed. It’s clear Helene still harbours passions. Against Tansey’s imploring, taking floor-space inch by inch towards him, Blyth’s performance shows Manders’ fright. Tansey’s magnificent. Both in showing rekindled desire mixed with anxiety, and a calibrated explosion. Only with Helene’s “You have no idea!” about the truth of her marriage, does Tansey’s full voice ring out with anguish.
Sarah Tansey and Alex Blyth. Photo Credit: Strat Mastoris
Tansey’s softer with Sebastian O’Driscoll-Henderson’s Oswald – who in his NVT debut makes an indelible impression as the freshest Oswald I’ve seen, closer to what the young artist must have been like. For Helene, anxious joy at his return fights with an over-solicitous fuss which Oswald can hardly respect: Helene sent him away at seven. He doesn’t know why, but in Leigh’s vivacious Regina, who’s learned French for a reason, he finds a potential soul-mate. Not just love-interest (all quiet flirts and giggles in the alcove) but for a loving act no-one might guess. Oswald’s growing weary, though at the beginning full of life.
O’Driscoll-Henderson is at his best with Leigh, who impressed in the title role with BLT’s The French Lieutenant’s Woman last year (where French wasn’t needed as here: both she and O’Driscoll-Henderson manage their literal badinage with aplomb). Here O’Driscoll-Henderson doesn’t feel the need to push vehemence (Tansey’s a master at modulating rage) and it’s clear a real actor is emerging in the gyres of intimacy.
Alex Blyth and Sarah Tansey. Photo Credit: Strat Mastoris
Robert J Shepherd, Alex Blyth and Sarah Tansey. Photo Credit: Strat Mastoris
Leigh’s gradations of Regina slowly mesmerise: from defiant daughter through barely controlled delight in seeing Oswald through a furious stand-off with Helene. In her final confrontation with Tansey and O’Driscoll-Henderson – Oswald as ignorant as her till now – Leigh spells out exactly what Regina’s lost with secrets and lies (so I’m not revealing them). And here nails it as firmly as Nora does in Ibsen’s preceding play (and first masterpiece) A Doll’s House. It’s a climactic moment and Leigh seizes it.
The studio proves ideally intimate for Steve Hutton’s period set. L-shaped with a central alcove and large French window exit, as well as the usual chaise-longue, table and chairs, even the off-white carpet gives this a lived-in Nordic sterility. Sabrina Giles’ lighting suggests something pitiless save at the ends of both halves. Eicca Toppinen’s cello music moodily judders through like a glacier (it’s even called ‘Black Ice’) perfectly setting tone; an understated burr. Fauré’s mid-period Pavane flickers up briefly like a regret from Paris.
A triumph of staging, fine acting and in Tansey a central performance to rival any Helene Alving I’ve seen.
Alex Blyth, Sarah Tansey and Sebstian O’Driscoll-Henderson. Photo Credit: Strat Mastoris
Sarah Tansey and Sebastian O’Driscoll-Henderson. Photo Credit: Strat Mastoris
Production Manager Ian Black, Stage Manager Gaby Bowring, Production Assistant Jason Lever
Set Design Steve Hutton, Set Build Simon Glazier, Dan Tranter, George Walter, Chris Tew. Set Painting Simon Glazier, Manda Steff, Annie Sheppard
Properties Bryony Weaver, Hair and Makeup Richi Blennerhassett
Costume Design: Karen Hindmarsh, Costume Assistant Jackie Jones
Lighting Design Sabrina Giles, Assistant Lighting Design Chris Dent
Lighting Operation Sabrina Giles, Tamsin Mastoris & Chris Dent
Sound Design Ian Black, Sound Operation Ian Black, Chris Dent
Script Prompt Jason Lever
Poster Tamsin & Strat Mastoris, Programme Tamsin Mastoris, Photography Strat Mastoris
Publicity and Social Media Elysa Hyde, Video Interview Alistsir Lock and Arun Varghese
Health and Safety Ian Black.
Many thanks Box Office FOH and Volunteers
Alex Blyth and Sarah Tansey. Photo Credit: Strat Mastoris
