Phantom Pains in GHOSTS & THE GREAT PRIVATION — Review

Ghosts is undoubtedly Henrik Ibsen’s gaggiest play, but Mark O’Rowe’s new translation, premiering at Lincoln Center’s Newhouse Theater, saps it of its enthralling power to enlighten via shock. Reading it (I’ve never seen a staged production) is an exercise in naughty drawing room gasps: who overheard whom saying what; could this character get away with that; will so-and-so be found out? It deals with Helena Alving (Lily Rabe), a wealthy widow anticipating the return of her son Oswald (Levon Hawke), and the tangled, secretive webs they’ve woven with the town pastor (Billy Crudup), their maid (Ella Beatty) and her father (Hamish Linklater). The late Mr. Alving was the type to get drunk and pal around the local brothel, and his social legacy has possibly crept into more biological territory.

O’Rowe’s translation minimizes talk of syphilis and scandal, focusing instead on the characters’ interpersonal dynamics, which are solid but unremarkable without the prurience coursing through the work’s venereal veins. Sex might have been more scandalous in 1881, when the play’s publication nearly ruined Ibsen’s career, but eschewing it outright seems a misguided attempt to honor his larger intention of skewering bourgeois morality. Despite the fine performances from the cast, Jack O’Brien’s production never provides a reason as to why we should be eavesdropping on this particular family.

Meanwhile, the first work of Soho Rep’s temporary residency at Playwrights Horizons, also focuses on a family’s generational phantom pains. The exhilarating announcement of a major new talent, Nia Akilah Robinson’s The Great Privation (How to flip ten cents into a dollar), charts the uneasy but steadfast self-determination of two pairs of Black women, mother and daughter, in 1832 and contemporary Philadelphia.

The earlier duo, Mrs. Freeman and Charity, hold a tense, nightslong vigil by their recently deceased patriarch’s grave, lest the medical college come exhume his corpse. It would be used to prevent recent outbreaks of cholera, they’re told by two separate flunkies, but know all too well, from the country’s history of transacting Black bodies, that they’d be the last to benefit from any research incurred. Robinson intercuts their scenes with modern ones following Minnie and daughter Charity, who have returned to Philly to care for their ailing matriarch and volunteer at the wealthy local branch of the children’s camp at which they typically work back home in Harlem. At this community center, they argue with each other and interact with their co-workers, their chipper boss and a fussy white counselor, eventually unearthing some of the town’s unsavory racial secrets.

Despite the play’s subject matter and the production’s expertly gothic atmosphere (lighting by Marika Kent, sound by Tosin Olufoloabi and, the set, by Mariana Sanchez, consists of a tree whose trunk breathes like an acid flashback), the sheer excitement generated by the play’s ingenuity render it an endlessly buoyant experience, bolstered by Robinson’s deft comic touches and the cast’s extraordinary performances. Impressively, her heavier discursive elements always feel organic, never dragging; they’re informed by the characters and feed into the drama.

The mother and daughter have a Beckett-like inextricable tie, in no small part due to the dual performances by Crystal Lucas-Perry and Clarissa Vickerie. They are the center of the play, not just because they’re the leads, onstage almost the entire time, but because they so fully embody their roles and their relationship that they create a universe unto themselves. Lucas-Perry is doing some of the most exciting work currently onstage, prowling and alighting the stage with preternatural prowess, and is matched in rebellious energy by Vickerie. They’re joined by two other pitch-perfect dual performers: the actor Holiday, as understanding but complicit Black workers (and, in one extravagant interlude, the women’s shifting imagination of Black Jesus), and Miles G. Jackson, as a sinister emissary from the college and, then, their feckless co-counselor. (Kara Harmon’s costumes for him, rolled-up t-shirt sleeves and Tevas, are highlights of her on-point work.)

There is a lyricism to Robinson’s dialogue that belongs to both classical drama and to today’s urgent need for action, and director Evren Odcikin taps directly into each, delivering one of the year’s strongest stage showings.

Ghosts is in performance through April 26, 2025 at Lincoln Center Theatre on West 65th Street in New York City. For tickets and more information, visit here.

The Great Privation is in performance through March 23, 2025 at the Peter Jay Sharp Theatre at Playwrights Horizons on West 42nd Street in New York City. For tickets and more information, visit here.