Ghosts by Luca Ronconi (review)

Space does not permit a detailed performance critique, but it is clear that the given compromise at the heart of the production continually shifts the level of theatrical discourse. No other performer matches Seitz' intense stylization; most attempt traditional performances as befits their training. We recall that Foreman consciously avoided the use of professional actors in his O-H work in pursuit of the deconstruction of the concept of "character ." Here he is caught in an insoluble dilemma that envelops both dramatic and performance texts. In accepting the textual immutability of the play his revisionary strategies must all be embodied in his mise en scene and hence risk the dangers of imposition and redundancy, dangers plaguing all such experimental versions of "fixed" classics. And working with traditional actors often means imposing on them values and techniques most find inauthentic . Yet surely this attempt to bridge conflicting modes of theatre discourse must be valued for its intelligence and aspiration, if mixed achievement. Without such ecumenical gestures our theatre will be trapped in a Tower of Babel where each cannot understand each, except in the lingua franca of banality. GHOSTS Directed by Luca Ronconi Spoleto Festival Glenn Loney If the name Luca Ronconi sounds faintly, but not instantly, familiar, it may be because the work of this Italian director is little known in the United States. Nonetheless, he excited a lot of attention and controversy in the 1960s when he produced his epic Orlando Furioso in a bubble-tent in New York's Bryant Park. This was one of the first important theatre pieces in which the dramatic action and the audience roved all around the tent-arena. Since some of the sequences were set in, on, and around large wheeled structures which actors occasionally pushed at or into the clumps of spectators , the effect was rather like an Asian Juggernaut rolling over willing human sacrifices. Whatever else it may have been-failing to illuminate the Orlando saga to any degree-it was at least memorable for its physical production and the interaction of actor and audience. Of Ronconi's new staging of Henrik Ibsen's Ghosts it may safely be said that the physical production was unforgettable; unfortunately, there wasn't any real interaction of spectators and performers planned or permitted. In fact, potential for any kind of interaction-even the passive one of viewing -steadily declined as viewers fled the superheated medieval church in which Ronconi had chosen to summon up ghosts from northern climes. 70 Ronconi seems to be one of those directors who is obsessed with the visual imagery of a production more than its possible emotional and intellectual aspects. Just as Orlando Furioso became a show about mobile stage-machinery , so did Ronconi's Ghosts become a play about an immense greenhouse -constructed the length of the historic church's nave. One could have foreseen this, as the Spoleto Festival press office had on hand a number of expensive, bulky press-kits from the manufacturer of the plastic panes used to create the conservatory. There were even six handsome color photos of the greenhouse model and sketches available. Actual photos of the production itself were scarcer and much less impressive. 0 CD Now it's quite true that Ibsen specifies a glassed-in conservatory as a central aspect of Ghosts' milieu, since It so dramatically helps visualize one of the play's most bitter Ironies: the dawning of a radiant sun, breaking through the grayish damp which has dominated the landscape throughout the play-just as Norwegian puritan hypocrisy has grayly oppressed the characters-at the very moment when Oswald's mind breaks, leaving Mrs. Alving bereft of all her hopes. (It's also handy for letting the audience see the glow of the off-stage orphanage fire.) But so vast was Ronconi's conservatory that it would seem Mrs. Alving had been building not Captain Alving's Orphanage, but the Bergen Botanical Gardens. Indifferent to the audience's comfort, Ronconi had provided no ef71 fective air-conditioning. Worse, the plastic panes seemed to concentrate the Klieg lights behind and above them, so both actors and audiences roasted. It's clear that Ronconi's staging principle in...