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Ghosts This Rough Magic Holden St Theatres Until Fri 12 March In the advertising material for This Rough Magic Theatre and Film's production of Ibsen's 'Ghosts' the new venue sounds more interesting than the play. And I'm afraid they did the right thing. This performance was okay for an amateur production (yes they knew all their lines and blocking; the biggest fault was when you're doing Naturalism, the aim is to look natural! Hopefully it was only the opening night jitters, but these guys were stiff. They were very uncomfortable on stage, they need to relax and enjoy themselves. Erica Richards as Regine Engstrand was the hardest to watch. Of everyone she was the most uncomfortable, especially in the opening scene, which doesn't make for a good start to the show. 'Ghosts' is supposed to be dynamic, making the audience cringe because of Pastor Mander's (played by Peter Davies) views of the 'woman's duty', not at what he's doing on stage. The use of the stage area was well divided, creating up to three playing areas, however, was occasionally broken when in consecutive scenes the character upstage could not and then could hear the characters downstage. This production does have the ability to be a good one if everyone just lets go. The one exception is Michael Baldwin who has a certain charm as Jacob Engstrand but does need to tone down the 'I've got a scabby leg' just a smidge to over-acting rather than overdone. The very practised poignant speech from Helene Alving (Tracey Walker) was well done and the venue was quite fitting for the production, giving a beautiful atmosphere for Mrs Alving and her 'Ghosts'. |
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