When Henrik Ibsen’s Ghosts premiered in London, in 1891, the Daily Telegraph decried it as “an open drain, a dirty act done publicly, a lazar house with all its doors and windows open.” Why such outrage? Examine the plot. The widow Helen Alving is grieving the death of her adulterous husband, Captain Alving, while dealing with her son, Oswald, whom she believes has “inherited” syphilis from his father. Oswald is in love with his mother’s maid, Regina, who was fathered by Alving. Venereal disease, incest, and, later in the play, euthanasia—these subjects shocked fin-de-siècle audiences. In England, Ghosts was banned from public performance until 1914. In time, audiences stopped clutching their pearls and recognized the intelligence and irony of Ibsen’s work, which was intended as a comment on Victorian morality. A new staging of the scandalous play is directed by Joseph Hill-Gibbins. —Jensen Davis