Ghosts
Gayle and I went to see the Shakespeare Theatre's production of Ghosts last night, and found it to be one of the company's rare disappointments. In a nod to lead actress Jane Alexander's former NEA chairmanship, Osvald becomes a painter of shocking nudes. Rather than contracting congenital syphilis from his dissolute father, Osvald succumbs to AIDs contracted in his wild life as a New York painter. This heavy-handed attempt to "update" the play and make it "relevant" reduces Mrs. Alving's moral dilemma to incoherence: there no longer appears to be any connection between her acquiescing in the immoral and abusive life her husband led and the heavy price her son pays. One thing this production did accomplish, however, was to awaken in me a desire to pick up the play and read it again after 15 years.
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