Ghosts (Belvoir St Theatre) single work   essay  
Issue Details: First known date: 2017... 2017 Ghosts (Belvoir St Theatre)
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AbstractHistoryArchive Description

'When this production of Henrik Ibsen’s most controversial play was programmed, no one could have guessed how pertinent it would appear in Australia at this moment. On the surface, this account of a bourgeois woman whose attempt to escape from a loveless marriage and a philandering husband is foiled by the Pastor she loved and the conventions of the times, who has to live a lie and finally deal with a beloved son who has inherited syphilis from his father, is of another era. After all, there is now at last understanding and help for those leaving an abusive marriage, and her son’s disease would easily be cured. But Ghosts is about more than these afflictions. The protagonist, Mrs Alving’s, speech to her nemesis, the hidebound, reactionary Pastor Manders, quoted above, is the core of the play. As Robert Brustein writes, Ibsen’s ‘underlying purpose was to demonstrate how a series of withered conventions, unthinkingly perpetuated, could result in the annihilation not only of a conventional family but, by extension, the whole modern world’.' (Introduction)

Publication Details of Only Known VersionEarliest 2 Known Versions of

  • Appears in:
    y separately published work icon Australian Book Review ABR no. 396 November 2017 12175310 2017 periodical issue

    Readers of ABR - and our contributors in particular - appreciate how much cultural philanthropy has transformed this magazine in recent years. Generous donatins from well over tow hundred ABR Patrons have enabled us to diversify our programs, broaden our content, and pay writers much better than were able to do in the past.' (Editorial)

    2017
    pg. 68
  • Appears in:
    y separately published work icon ABR : Arts Australian Book Review : Arts 2017 13909134 2017 periodical issue 2017
Last amended 9 May 2018 13:19:34
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https://www.australianbookreview.com.au/abr-arts/4274-ghosts-belvoir-st-theatre Ghosts (Belvoir St Theatre)small AustLit logo ABR : Arts
Subjects:
  • Ghosts Eamon Flack , 2017 single work drama
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