“Ghosts” modern adaptation by Gary Owen

Credit: Helen Murray

My Theatre Confidences 🤫

“Ghosts” by Ibsen,

adapted by Gary Owen

Lyric Hammersmith until 10 May

Gary Owen’s Ghosts, now playing at the Lyric Hammersmith, begins with a promise. It declares itself as an adaptation of Ibsen’s seminal 1881 play; a slow-burning tragedy that dared to confront the hypocrisies of bourgeois morality, the toxicity of repression, and the cruel intergenerational cost of silence. Ibsen’s Ghosts is sharp and uncompromising, clear in its aim and unafraid to confront. Owen’s version, by contrast, plays it safe. It unfolds predictably, with scenes strung together under the illusion of depth. It leans on stereotypical tensions and familiar tropes, mistaking them for emotional weight.

In Owen’s update, we’re in present-day Wales. Helena, a polished widow with charitable credentials, has built a shiny new children’s hospital in her late husband’s name. Her son, Oz shows up, and with him comes a slow leak of buried truths. What follows is a steady unraveling: family secrets, moral justifications, and the unspoken cost of keeping up appearances. It’s Ibsen, yes, but filtered through a very specific, very curated lens, where the mess is carefully staged, but never truly felt.

We are, apparently, tackling the “big” issues: class, abuse, intergenerational trauma. But what’s actually onstage is something flatter, more inert. A formulaic plot driven by one narrative revelation after another, stacking meaning like IKEA furniture; methodical, functional, and totally lifeless.

Credit: Helen Murray

The dialogue sounds like a group of people pretending to talk about feelings, rather than actually feeling them. There's a glossy, performative tone that hangs over the whole thing; an artistic affect rather than artistic urgency. These are characters who say “I’m hurt” but don’t seem to bleed. Psychology here is soap-operatic, surface-level, ticking the boxes of trauma without daring to plunge into it. At times, it feels like watching The Bold and The Beautiful in the ‘90s; everyone whispering secrets and delivering emotional speeches with furrowed brows, but nothing underneath. It’s therapy talk dressed up as drama.

The direction tries. Genuinely, it tries. There are gestures towards layering, towards depth, moments where the stage breathes a little. I liked how the characters were strategically positioned in the space to mirror the emotional pressure they were supposedly under; especially when facing the audience directly, almost as if projecting their pain outward, the way we often do when processing trauma.

The actors, too, are committed. Some of the acting is genuinely great, but there’s only so much you can do when the bones of the piece are so weak. I truly loved Callum Scott Howells and Patricia Allison. But that lack of depth inevitably infects the stage chemistry, which feels clumsy, disconnected, even hollow at times.

Credit: Helen Murray

And look…I don’t give star ratings, and thank god for that, because what would I even do here? It’s a façade. A theatre-shaped object, rather than theatre.

Ibsen’s Ghosts remains urgent because it stares moral rot in the face and refuses to blink. This Ghosts spends two hours circling around its own navel, convinced that narrative alone is enough to earn gravitas. It isn’t. Not anymore. Not with the world burning. Not when better stories are being ignored. Not when we all deserve more than this.

Meanwhile, artists with fire in their bellies, whose stories carry real stakes and risk, are left fighting to be heard from the fringes. It’s exhausting to watch mediocrity be platformed so confidently. It’s what happens when privilege creates art at a distance. Close to the language of pain, but far from its consequences.

We deserve theatre that dares, that bleeds, that risks, that demands something of us. This isn’t that.

I’m sorry it was in my TOP 5 Shows to see in April. But hey, that’s the risk, right? Sometimes it just goes wrong.

I’ve been really moved by how many of you reached out via DMs after my first Instagram story, thank you. It means a lot to know that honesty resonates, especially when offering a perspective that doesn’t centre the usual, comfortable voices of the middle and upper class.

Grateful for this community. You remind me why we care about theatre in the first place.

Credit: Helen Murray

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A quick note on my reflections on the shows I see:

Let’s be clear: you won’t find the typical “review” on my page. I don’t buy into the so-called objectivity of mainstream theatre criticism; it’s outdated and protects toxic power structures while sidelining marginalised voices. I’m not objective, and I’m proud of it. I’ve got my own lenses. My reflections are personal, shaped by my lived experiences and values. I share what moved me, what challenged me, and what’s worth talking about; not ticking boxes or handing out stars.

And no, I’m not going to describe the whole plot or list every onstage moment; I find that mind-numbingly boring, both to write and to read.

Giuliano x

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My Way of Looking at Theatre

You know, the more I think about it, the clearer it becomes that traditional theatre criticism has often been a tool for maintaining existing power structures.

It’s time to drop the privileged fancy talk around theatre and break free from star ratings.

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