Ghosts. Sam Wanamaker Playhouse.

In his diaries pre-war socialite, politician, and serial philanderer Duff Cooper describes a difficult evening visiting a 1920s production of Henrik Ibsen’s classic tragedy Ghosts. His struggle was not so much with the play’s portrayal of incest, sexually transmitted infection, and assisted suicide, but with the challenge of having to explain to his dim, wide-eyed, upper-class companion what on earth was going on. A visit to Joe Hill-Gibbins’ uneven new adaptation of the work, currently playing in the candlelit intimacy of the Sam Wanamaker Playhouse, may leave you with fellow feeling for both Cooper and his friend.

In some respects, Hill-Gibbins adaptation of Ghosts elucidates a few of the more obvious ambiguities in Ibsen’s original. The illness twenty-something artist Osvald Alving (Stuart Thompson) suffers from is named as congenital syphilis, something Ibsen only hinted at. The kiss between syphilitic Osvald and his half-sister, the Alving family maid Regine Engstrand (Sarah Slimani), takes place not offstage but in a long lingering snog centre stage.

The mixture of lust and seething resentment Osvald’s mother Helene Alving (a mesmerising Hattie Morahan) feels towards buttoned-up priest and erstwhile love object Father Manders (Paul Hilton bedecked in a grey three piece suit and looking like an accountant from Surbiton) is here given robust physical expression. She pushes him, beats on his chest like a drum, and envelopes him in erotic embrace as she seeks, unsuccessfully, to renew their amorous attachment.

Manders, whose disappointment at the moral flaws of others is surely a projection of his own unresolved sexual yearnings, pins Helene against the wall at one point, rubbing himself against her with the frenetic energy of a rampant puppy. Later he grasps the throat of Regine’s odious stepfather, carpenter and wannabee brothel owner Engstrand (a deliciously venomous Greg Hicks). It is as if he means to do him in.

Regine expresses her desire for Mander’s patronage by seductively removing his shoes and socks, caressing his feet as she does so. Her later recognition of the consequences of Helene’s lifetime of deceit leads her to pour an entire bottle of champagne over her employer’s head. The sheer carnality of Hill-Gibbins’ reimagination of the play impresses but subtle and retrained it most decidedly ain’t. Think Scandi noir remained as Tennessee Williams’ style southern gothic.

What is a little difficult to pin down here is Hill-Gibbins’ overall vision for the piece. One obvious conundrum lies in Rosanna Vize’s set design. The action unfolds on a stage devoid of furniture or props (apart from champagne and glasses) and entirely covered in what seems to be luxurious purple faux fur. The actors spend much of the time bare foot, either lying in various states of repose on the floor, or kneeling, or perching on the edge of the stage, or trailing each other around. Much of the dialogue between Manders and Helene takes place over the prone form of a sleeping Osvald, here depicted as the embodied form of the sins of the boy’s dead father, Captain Alving.

Perhaps the design is meant to evoke a kind of cocoon-like intimacy in this most domestic of Ibsen’s plays. Often it looks more like a swamp into which the cast periodically submerge and wallow, and from which they subsequently rise, spectral-like, to follow their paths towards preordained Sophoclean doom. The set certainly looks striking, aided by a rear wall formed entirely of mirrors, but deciphering its intent is a challenge.

Another conundrum lies in Hill-Gibbins attitude towards the work’s humour. There certainly are laughs in Ibsen’s original, but this production veers perilously in the direction of tragicomedy, even parody. The loud dinner gong that chimes as Manders learns of Captain Alving’s sins is played for laughs, as is Helen’s comment “well, she has her flaws”, when warning her son against canoodling with his sister. Funny yes, but opinions will vary as to how much the humour adds to the overall tone.

That the sinews of Ibsen’s drama are just about observable under the heft of Hill-Gibbins’ directorial vision is mostly down to tremendous performances. Morahan excels as Helene, brilliantly tracking the woman’s journey from passive-aggressive restraint to wild fury, the visceral anger pouring out of every pore. “I’m done with laws” she says at one point, and she means it. Thompson, in stripy shorts, hefty rings on his fingers, and cardigan almost as fluffy as the stage, is a delight playing Alving as a king of woke, pansexual man-boy. Slimani brings some studied restraint to Regine. Hilton’s repressed Manders and Hicks’ hissing Engstrand impress too.

Writer: Henrik Ibsen (adapted by Joe Hill-Gibbins)

Director: Joe Hill-Gibbins