I’ll admit it: when I hear the name Ibsen I reflexively think: moralistic. The narrowness of this mind-set was brought home to me during a recent conversation with the Irish playwright Mark O’Rowe, whose new version of the Norwegian dramatist’s 1881 play, Ghosts will start previews at LCT’s Newhouse space on February 13th.
“People often reduce his best-known works to one thunderous moral action: Nora shutting the door as she leaves in A Doll's House, or Hedda Gabler killing herself,” O’Rowe said. “But when you dig deeper into these plays you realize that they defy such straightforward readings. Just when you think a definitive statement has been made, Ibsen immediately shows the contrasting side of that argument.”
"Even though Ghosts was written over 140 years ago," O’Rowe continued, "Ibsen’s insight still resonates. Here in 2025, we still believe we have all the answers - politically, morally, religiously - but Ibsen knew that no matter how certain we are of our beliefs, the world will eventually reveal to us the hubris inherent in that certainty. And will often punish us for it.”
Ibsen's sophistication isn’t always easy to unravel. “I spent a long time adapting Hedda Gabler for a production at the Abbey Theatre in Ireland,” O’Rowe said, “and in the end I still hadn't figured her out. The character has so many contradictions. Just when you think you've understood her, she says or does something to send you back to square one."
"The characters in Ghosts are complex too," he continues, "as are its themes. Though the story is far more streamlined and dynamic. To me, it plays very much like a thriller, with a plot that becomes increasingly gripping as it progresses."
In constructing his new version O’Rowe said he excised none of Ibsen’s plot. Which is: The widow Helena Alving is about to open an orphanage dedicated to the memory of her late husband, in consultation with her old friend Pastor Manders. In doing so, terrible family secrets come to light.
This version takes into account the conditioning of contemporary audiences. “People have been watching TV and cinema their entire lives," O’Rowe said. “Their ability to pick up on information quickly means that, what Ibsen might have had to be very explicit about, we can suggest in simpler, more subtle ways. As a result, the play is now that little bit more distilled or compact, and, hopefully, effective.”
O’Rowe explained his general approach to composition with a nod to the poet Seamus Heaney. “He was asked how you write a poem, and replied simply, ‘I write it, then I read it over and I fix it. Then I read it over again and fix it again. And I keep doing this till one day it’s done.’ I thought, 'Yeah, it's really as simple and as difficult as that.'"
O’Rowe’s skills at honing a text come from his many years of playwriting, screenwriting, and directing in his native Ireland, often at the Abbey Theater in Dublin, where his own production of Ghosts premiered. His more general passion for theater has other roots. “I had a working-class upbringing in Ireland during the 1980s,” he said, “with no education beyond what I suppose would be high school level in America.” After a few years of dead-end jobs, he realized that his life was going nowhere, and that writing might be a way out. While he was more a fan of movies and literature than of theater, he was instinctively canny about the realities of a writer’s life. “Film seemed like such a long shot - there were so few being produced in Ireland at the time - and I felt that a novel would require too much stamina.” He started writing plays.
Mid-way through his career he also began to direct. Like many playwrights, he'd experienced the frustration of seeing his work take shape through another person's vision, and he tends to be happier having the director’s authority over each play's initial production, as well as enjoying the conviviality of the daily assembly. “I love being in the rehearsal room with actors, discovering stuff together, working out problems I haven't been able to solve during the writing process, watching the whole thing slowly come to life."
As to any differences between his actors in Dublin and the American actors rehearsing here at LCT, O’Rowe commented, “I worked hard to give the dialogue a neutral feel to honor Ibsen’s straightforward, unadorned style. A side benefit of that approach is that it makes the text a little more universally playable." Listening to the performers during early New York rehearsals, directed by Jack O’Brien, O’Rowe said his Ghosts so far, is proving a smooth traveler.
"The American actors have a more confident, playful approach to the piece, which I'm loving, but I'm also thrilled at how natural the words sound in their mouths. Although there has been the odd unconscious 'Irishism' I've had to change!” And so, after the first week of rehearsals, O’Rowe was sufficiently satisfied to return home to Ireland. “I’m fortunate to have the play in such good hands - and Jack is an incredible director! So at this point I have little really to do except look forward to the fun of opening night.”
Brendan Lemon is a freelance journalist in New York.
