I saw a production of Ghosts only once, at the Stratford Festival Theater in 1976 (I still have the program!) {hoarder!], featuring the amazing Nicholas Pennell as Oswald, and I still recall the last, dazzling and horrific image of him on stage there.
The play, 1881, by Norwegian Henrik Ibsen, had its first production in 1882 in Chicago! It is an intense family drama, with a searing analysis of the limitations of social conventions on the human spirit--order, duty, religion, and the play also depicts venereal disease, incest, and madness. It's what's below the orderly surface in this family, and it is what they do not do about all the dissolution underneath that creates all the problems. In other words, pretending things were fine on the surface caused all the decay underneath (wait: is this a review about flossing?!).
I'm reading ghost stories of various kinds as fast as I can for a fall 23 class on ghosts of all stripes (and solids), though this one is not about supernatural ghosts. The central characters include Helen Alving, a widow; her son Oswald, a painter; Rev. Manders, who has been a spiritual and financial advisor to the Alving family; Jacob Engstrand, a carpenter, and his daughter Regina who works as a maid for the Alving family (though she is actually the illegitimate daughter, a secret, of the deceased Captain Alving, a pillar of the community in public reputation, but a scoundrel in private reality).
The surface is calm and happy as Oswald comes home to be with his mother, but underneath we see that the ghosts of Captain Alving's dissolute life has been visited on the Alving family, as Oswald and Regina would like to be married.. . . but oops, there's that blood cousin thing, and then Oswald we see is dying of syphilis, too (the ghost of his father's profligacy visited on the son; it's in the blood, as they say).
Sound like fun? Pair it with Ibsen's Hedda Gabler, a pro-woman play for sure, two of the greatest plays ever, with intensity throughout, and an electrifying conclusion.
Ghosts: "What did people in the past bury, and now it’s coming out of the ground, and coming to light?"