The PlayFinder™

THE STORY: In 1881 Ibsen rocked the literary and theatrical worlds with the publication of GHOSTS, a play so controversial in its time that even the head of Nya Teatern, one of Stockholm’s major theatres, called it “one of the filthiest things ever written in Scandanavia.” Once the uproar had died down, audiences proved far more receptive to GHOSTS than the literati had initially been, and while its dramatic subjects of promiscuity, incest and sexually transmitted disease no longer arouse the feverish denunciations of Ibsen’s time, their treatment retains the power that has made the play a masterpiece of Western literature. In this crackling new translation, celebrated playwright Lanford Wilson has revivified GHOSTS for a new audience, and as we too continue to confront the specter of horrifying sexual disease, GHOSTS has never seemed more profoundly relevant.