Word: oswald
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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Helene then moves home and husband to a life of rural seclusion. She protects her infant son Oswald from his brutish father by packing him off to boarding school at an early age. When the Captain impregnates the maid, Helene quickly marries her off to a carpenter named Engstrand and raises the child Regina in her own home. If she can't save the man's conscience, she can at least salvage his reputation; Helene busies herself with philanthropy while her husband garners the glory...
Ghosts opens several years later. Regina and Oswald are full grown, the Captain is ten years dead. Mrs. Alving has cemented her late husband's outstanding reputation by financing an orphanage with his estate. On the eve of the dedication ceremonies, Pastor Manders has come to preside at the affair, and Oswald has come home after several years absence...
...play continues in a series of shattering revelations. The Pastor is crushed by the lifelong depravity of the Captain. Oswald and Regina discover that their incipient affair borders on incest. Mrs. Alving realizes that despite her effort, her son has been maimed by the evil deeds of his father...
...results. Kolzak's adaptation enables Epstein to seize a once shallow caricature of a clergyman and transform it into a complex, brooding performance. Karen Ross is a good Mrs. Alving, adding a layer of sophisticated and casual confidence to Ibsen's troubled widow. Stephen Kolzak as the tortured painter Oswald gives an excellent performance; his harrowing breakdown is the one scene where emotion transcends Ibsen's carefully orchestrated social commentaries. Sidney Atwood as Engstrand and Helena Snow as the ambitious Regina handle modernization less effectively by dipping into stereotype. Atwood's carpenter is too much the fast-talking hustler...
...McMillan's wife Priscilla is writing a book with Marina Oswald on President John Kennedy's assassination...