Episode 074: Ghosts by Henrik Ibsen

Host: Douglas Schatz Guest: Kirsten Shepherd-Barr

Welcome to The Play Podcast where we explore the greatest new and classic plays. Each episode we choose a single play to talk about in depth with our expert guest. We'll discuss the play's origins, its themes, characters, structure and impact. For us the play is the thing.

Henrik Ibsen's dark family drama Ghosts provoked outrage when it was published in 1881, its treatment of sexual disease, incest and euthanasia too much for the critics. More than 140 years later its portrait of repressed truths and social hypocrisy remains as powerful as ever.

As we record this episode a new adaptation of Ghosts by Joe Hill-Gibbons is playing in the Sam Wanamaker theatre at Shakespeare's Globe theatre in London.

Kirsten Shepherd-Barr, Professor English and Theatre Studies at St Catherine's College, Oxford, joins us to review Ibsen's unflinching drama.