Ibsen's Ghosts is a story about intrigues, false images, secrets, and lies. Staged at the historical Geva theatre in downtown Rochester, the play was performed on a gradient stage. The scene, a parlor, a room with four doors; the first door {upstage left} leading to bedrooms, the second {downstage left} leading to the kitchen and laundry areas and then outside, the third {downstage right} opens to the dining room and later the cellar, and the last {upstage right} goes to a foyer or coatroom of some sort and then outside. The stage itself was dressed as a living room or parlor complete with a working table, and chairs, fancy couches, end tables, a stout fireplace or woodstove, chairs with ottomans, and a delicate coffee table. The upstage "wall" was comprised mostly of glass making up several floor length French doors running from one end of the stage to the next, backed by a rainy backdrop. My first impression of the set was that for such a small stage there was a lot of stuff on the stage and not much working space but my opinion of this is based on my being a dancer used to productions requiring a lot of space to dance. Also, no curtains so when the doors opened the whole thing was just there for the audience to take in on its own like a gigantic dollhouse on display. As I awaited the start of the show I wondered what would happen if the set designers decided to put everything on wheels, just as a gag, and sat back and laughed as the whole set just rolled downstage throughout the play.
The show opens with Regina busily tidying up as Jacob arrives, soggy from outside, bearing news of his plan for his sailor home and for Regina's place in it. My first thought at their interaction was that she's not really his daughter. This intuition was more or less solidified by the few lines in which he had referred to her as a bastard. That this was the opening scene identifies Regina's parentage as the/a main plot of the story, and who her real father is.
