Word: ghosting
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...Ghost Sonata is a play about the kind of judgments we are likely to make with insufficient knowledge of one another's motives, and, more importantly, with insufficient knowledge of our own intentions. These judgments have nothing to do with any rigid rules of human procedure which the playwright is trying to foist off on us. Rather they involve the immediate, second-to-second perceptions and judgments by which we decide within ourselves about the character of our fellow human beings. The nature of the Good and Evil on which these judgments are based (either by us or by Strindberg...
...obsessions." In this sense, he both misses the truth of the play, and, by this very fault, proves its validity. We so much the more belong to Strindberg's configuration by every insufficient and damaging appraisal we make of the appearances before us. Thomas J. Babe, Jr. '63, Director, "Ghost Sonata...
That is the emotional cycle of The Ghost Sonata, whose second and third acts end with the quoted lines. I mean no irreverence by the analogy: if one does not see the play as a record of the author's shifting state of mind one must suppose it simply lopsided, shambling and confused. The playwright excites our sympathies as none of the actual characters can. For this is a "dream play"; the characters are at best ghosts; and the central thing is the controlling mind of the dreamer...
Trying to imagine the Strindberg who wrote The Ghost Sonata, I think of a devoted Nietzschean suddenly confronted by a sweet little girl holding a lollipop and an affectionate puppydog. For an unguarded moment he is charmed; but the girl goes her way, and the play-wright reflects that perhaps the candy only reveals her materialism, and the dog her slavish dependence on pets. He becomes hopelessly despairing, then immeasurably compassionate. He writes a poem...
...easy to discount these weaknesses. Chris and Bitte Rawson's new translation gives a solid idiomatic script that never sounds awkward. Stephen Tucker has designed a brilliant, extremely compact set: the costumes and music are admirable. Babe has directed a Ghost Sonata that is a capable and striking rendition of Strindberg's fantasies and obsessions...