THEATRE REVIEW: The Ghost Sonata, Palm House, Sefton Park, Liverpool

Apr 24 2008 by Philip Key, Liverpool Daily Post

SWEDISH playwright August Strindberg’s The Ghost Sonata has its 100th anniversary marked this year in Liverpool with an extraordinary production from People Show based around the Palm House in Sefton Park.

It is one of those event shows in which the audience is marched around the Palm House and finally taken inside for the curious tea party which concludes the tale.

On arrival, you seem to be part of a totalitarian state with soldiers guarding gates behind which masked people in white overalls stop and ask you questions. All this before the play has started.

When it does, a surreal tragicomedy world takes over in which white-faced, red-lipped characters in outlandish costumes hover between silent comedy and Monty Pythonish Music Hall.

The Old Man,Hummel, is top-hatted in a wheel chair pushed by a silent servant in dark glasses, his adversary The Colonel a red-coated, true British type with bristling moustache who also plays saxophone.

And our hero The Student is dapper but a little jaded and wears a straw boater.

Hummel befriends the student but only to use him to revenge himself on The Colonel whose wife he once courted and whose daughter he claims as his own. His trick is to gain entry to the Colonel’s tea party by pairing off the student and daughter.

There is a lot more going on in both play and production, however, with a huge cast (including LIPA students) and sets and scenes all over the place.

The story may be downbeat with its emphasis on death and decay but the production is defiantly upbeat, bursting with original visual ideas, lavish costumes and a musical score from Mike Figgis.

Performances under director Josette Bushell-Mingo are big and often grotesque while the Palm House adds its own mood, particularly in the party scene when all the secrets are revealed.

There are some modern touches – Britney Spears gets a mention! – but this is certainly Stindberg’s play with all its fantastical grimness in place.

It is also a production that once experienced is unlikely to be forgotten. It runs until Sunday.

philkey@dailypost.co.uk