The Telegraph: “I trudged to this production with all the enthusiasm of a schoolboy making his way to a double maths lesson on a dank Monday morning.

One of the peculiarities of my job is that you are sometimes required to see the same play twice in close proximity, and it was only last week that I endured Stephen Unwin’s punishingly dour production of Ghosts (1881) at the Rose Theatre in Kingston. The idea of a second dose of a work that is grim even by Ibsen’s demanding standards felt almost unendurable.

But Richard Eyre’s superb staging, in his own fleet and vivid adaptation, held me in its grip throughout. Unlike Unwin, he stages the piece without an interval, so that the dramatic tension isn’t dissipated, but the real difference is the in-the-moment intensity of the acting.

It is a production that creates a strong sense of impending doom, and when the worst happens, as we know it must, it does so with a raw, unbuttoned passion that leaves one reeling. The dramatic effect is exactly the opposite of Unwin’s production. There the play’s climax seemed merely depressing. Here one feels unexpectedly elated by the reckless emotional truth of both Ibsen’s play and the superb performances of the actors.

But as well as penetrating to the dark heart of a drama that deals with the syphilis a son has inherited through the debauched sins of his father, Eyre also finds a good deal of dark humour in the piece.
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As Pastor Manders, the self-anointed spiritual adviser to Helene Alving and her troubled son Oswald, Will Keen hilariously suggests a man who is convinced of his own rightness while getting things spectacularly wrong. With his grating voice, bald, dome-like head and strange nervous hand gestures, this sanctimonious cleric is irresistibly entertaining even though the consequences of his actions invariably prove malign.

There are also fine comic touches in the performances of Brian McCardie as the disreputable builder, Engstrand, who ruthlessly exploits the Pastor’s almost criminal gullibility and Charlene McKenna as Engstrand’s daughter, a pert maid who hopes to win Oswald’s heart with her facility in French.

The heart of the play though is the relationship between Lesley Manville as Mrs Alving and Jack Lowden as her ailing, anguished son. Manville presents the mother with an extraordinary sense of accumulated tension, capturing a woman who is haunted by bitter memories of the past and fearful of dreadful developments still to come. She also movingly reveals Mrs Alving’s courage in finally acknowledging that her own part in the family tragedy hasn’t been without blame.

Meanwhile Jack Lowden, big, shambolic and increasingly distraught as her bohemian artist son, conveys the ugly egotism of the chronically sick, and the sheer terror of his terrible illness. The play’s closing moments are almost too upsetting to watch.

Tim Hatley’s design, with translucent walls that make people in the adjoining room actually look like ghosts, and Peter Mumford’s often dramatic lighting, with the play ending in a blood-red dawn, both add greatly to the intensity of a production that does full justice to this thrilling, harrowing play.”

Ghosts [Almeida Theatre 2014].mkv

General
Container:  	Matroska
Runtime: 	1 h 36 min
Size: 	1.41 GiB
Video
Codec: 	x264
Resolution: 	1024x576 
Aspect ratio:  	16:9
Frame rate: 	25.000 fps
Bit rate: 	1 900 kb/s
BPP: 	0.129
Audio
#1:  	English 2.0ch AC-3 @ 192 kb/s

https://nitro.download/view/F26E3A68092BEFC/Ghosts_Almeida_Theatre_1.mkv

Language(s):English
Subtitles:None

The post Henrik Ibsen & Richard Eyre – Ghosts: Almeida Theatre (2014) first appeared on Cinema of the World.

23 BBC radio adaptations of Ibsen’s plays, with versions by writers such as David Hare and Brian Friel, and performances by the likes of David Suchet, Ralph Richardson and Paul Scofield.

Includes
brand 2011 112 minutes drama on 3
doll’s house 2013 114 minutes drama on 3
doll’s house 1979 141 minutes radio 3
emperor and galilean 1990 203 minutes radio 3
enemy of the people 1987 89 minutes Saturday night theatre
enemy of the people 2010 60 minutes world service
enemy of the people 2018 114 minutes radio 4
ghosts 2013 85 minutes drama on 3
hedda gabler 2013 117 minutes radio 4
john gabriel borkman 1974 84 minutes radio 3
john gabriel borkman 2015 114 minutes radio 4 classic serial
lady from the sea 2009 109 minutes radio 3
master builder 2021 114 minutes radio 4
meeting in rome 1991 47 minutes radio 3
peer gynt 1943 169 minutes third programme
pillars of society 1989 133 minutes radio 4 Monday play
pretenders 2006 119 minutes radio 3
rosmersholm 1990 151 minutes radio 3 Friday play
rosmersholm 2017 114 minutes radio 3
when we dead awaken 1991 99 minutes radio 3 Sunday play
when we dead awaken 1969 90 minutes radio 3
wild duck 1974 60 minutes world service
wild duck 2008 132 minutes radio 3

https://nitro.download/view/110A270BBA51C33/HENRIK_IBSEN.rar

Language(s):English
Subtitles:None

The post Henrik Ibsen – BBC Radio Plays (1943-2021) first appeared on Cinema of the World.