Haunted by ghosts of the past

Karachi
The just-concluded Young Directors’ Festival at the National Academy of Performing Arts threw up some positive developments in the world of Pakistani theatre; positive in that they were novel, unconventional experiments.
Whether they managed to make an impression on the audience is a question that we would always have to grapple with. One such play staged by the academy on Saturday evening was “Ghosts”.
An adaptation of a play by German playwright Henrik Ibsen and directed by Kashif Hussain, it was the story of a woman, Mrs Alving, who has a stormy marriage during her husband’s lifetime.
While she has kept the negative aspects of her marriage concealed from Pastor Manders, she learns that these are not secret, after all.
She also discovers that her son, Oswald, is suffering from an unmentionable disease he’s inherited from his late father.
Her emotional troubles are further confounded when it transpires that Oswald is in love with Regina Engstrand who, it turns out, is the love child of the late captain Alving.
In other words, he’s fallen for his half-sister.
However, the presentation must have been all Latin to most viewers because an overwhelming portion of the play is mere dumb charades and a show of gymnastics by ghosts all clad in black and ghostly movements, as if devils moving across a room. There’s no speech, no dialogues.
The ghostly depiction and the Pastor Manders–Mrs Alving dialogues could be construed as digging up the ghosts of the past. The representation of the occult beings just does not click with the plot.
Every now and then, the silence is broken by screams and sighs, but that’s about all. Most of the play is a depiction of ghostly movements and sounds.
Most of the audience apparently, were left mystified by the lack of connection between the ghostly apparitions and the Pastor Manders–Mrs Alvington dialogue, and later the conversation between the lady and her son.
Perhaps, one could conclude that it is those ghostly beings which have started it all; could be anybody’s guess as a lot was left to the imagination of the audience.
However, what made the show highly appropriate was the lighting. The hall, and in particular the stage, were lit in a manner that really produced a ghostly ambience.
The fact that it did not quite click with the comprehension of the audience was reflected by the negative remarks that were to be heard after the play gave over and people were exiting the hall.
While Kashif Hussain’s attempt is laudable, he would be advised to simplify things for the sake of the audience who, generally, are not so initiated in theatrical innovations.