Lily Rabe has been doing something she rarely does when she acts in a play or a film. She’s reaching out to urge her friends and family to head to Lincoln Center, where she’s delivering a masterclass in grief and guilt each night in an acclaimed revival of Henrik Ibsen’s “Ghosts.”
“It’s always the case when you do a play that when it’s done, it’s gone,” Rabe confesses. “This time, there’s no part of me that takes it for granted. Everyone has busy lives, and you don’t want to bother them and tell them to come see the thing you’re doing. But it’s not about coming to see us. I want people to see this production, because it feels so important right now.”
Related Stories
Rabe and Hamish Linklater, her longtime partner and a member of the play’s ensemble, are sitting in an unadorned rehearsal room in the basement of Lincoln Center Theater just hours before they take the stage for a Friday night show. Both were unfamiliar with “Ghosts,” which doesn’t have the renown of Ibsen’s “A Doll’s House” or “Hedda Gabler,” but were struck by how topical the story felt despite its 19th century setting. “Ghosts” follows a wealthy widow, Mrs. Helena Alving, who plans to open an orphanage in honor of her late husband. It’s an occasion that finds her son, Oswald, returning to the family home after a decade away. Over the course of a dramatic day and night, the Alving family is forced to grapple with long-hidden secrets, ones that have impacted Oswald’s health. Without spoiling too much, this relatively simple premise becomes a way for Ibsen to explore a broad arrange of themes from religious hypocrisy to sexism to class.
Popular on AG°Ù¼ÒÀÖ
Rabe felt that Mrs. Alving — a voracious reader who is dominated or second-guessed by the men in her life, including an oafish minister (Billy Crudup) and a morally compromised carpenter (Linklater) — resonated at a time when women’s rights are under attack in the U.S. The pair were enlisted to mount the production before Trump was swept back into office, but they see “Ghosts” as sounding a note of alarm about the world order he’s shaking up.
“I wish we were performing this play under different circumstances, but under these circumstances, I’m glad we’re doing this play,” Rabe says.
Linklater chimes in here. “What’s that phrase about making joyful noise?” he asks. “We’ve got to bring people together and give them a sense that their voices matter. That’s always art’s job, but particularly now, when everyone is sort of numb with their disenfranchisement. We want to remind everyone that you can absolutely make your world a better place again.”
The show has also served to remind the couple, who met during the 2010 production “The Merchant of Venice,” how much they love stage. Both have successful careers in film and TV — she as a key part of Ryan Murphy’s “American Horror Story” universe, he as a character actor who recently played the likes of Abraham Lincoln and Jeb Magruder — but being in-demand has kept them away from theater. Rabe hasn’t acted on stage for a decade, and Linklater last tread the boards in 2019.
“It’s something I knew that I missed,” Rabe says. “But as you do when you really miss something, you try to shut that part of yourself off, because it’s painful to think about. Being back here doing a play, doing this play, in particular, has flooded me with the realization that I needed this more than I admitted. I never want to be away for that length of time again.”
Linklater says that acting for the camera has its rewards, but it doesn’t allow him to stretch all his muscles in the same way.
“It feels wonderful to go home empty,” Linklater says. “When you’re done performing a play, you’ve expended as much energy and as much of your sweat and your soul as you possibly can. Working in film and TV, there’s such commitment to getting a very specific moment right. When you’re on stage, you’re emptied out and ripped open. And then you feel like, ‘Oh, I’ve done an honest day’s labor.'”
“Ghosts” also allowed the pair to reunite with Jack O’Brien, who previously directed Rabe and Linklater in a crackling 2014 revival of “Much Ado About Nothing” as part of the Public Theatre’s Shakespeare in the Park.
“Lily and Jack are not-so-secretly best friends and Marco Polo each other twice a day,” Linklater says with an exaggerated sigh.
It was O’Brien who insisted that the two-hour show break with tradition by eschewing an intermission. The decision got Rabe’s endorsement, even though it means she has to chart Mrs. Alving’s tragic arc, from a life of comfort and relative tranquility to one of chaos and unthinkable choices, without getting a chance to catch her breath.
“I’m so grateful that we don’t do it with an intermission,” she says. “When it’s over there’s this sort of silence and looking around the room because everyone has had this really personal experience. I’m not sure it would keep the momentum if we took a break. And I really can’t imagine what I would do with myself for those 15 minutes. Once I get started, I don’t want to leave the stage.”
“Ghosts” isn’t an upper. It’s a relentlessly depressing story, where virtue isn’t rewarded, it’s steamrolled. But Linklater still argues that a story that deals with everything from incest to euthanasia is nevertheless rewarding.
“We had a Saturday matinee and there was an older woman who turned to her friend and said, ‘It was so sad. Wasn’t that great?'” Linklater said. “People are really lit up by this experience. They like that we’re asking them to take this ride with us.”
