Director sees ‘Ghosts’ in new light

Anders Cato has directed a long list of productions at Berkshire Theatre Festival, including last year’s “Waiting for Godot,’’ and he has wanted to tackle Ibsen for years. With the right actors on hand this season, he is directing Ibsen’s once-shocking “Ghosts’’ - in his own new translation, no less - Tuesday through Aug. 29 in Stockbridge.

It’s a cheery little tale of a widow trying to cope with the legacy left by her womanizing husband, which has perilous consequences for their son. Mia Dillon stars as the unfortunate Mrs. Alving, David Adkins plays her spiritual adviser, Manders, and Randy Harrison - best known for playing Justin on Showtime’s “Queer as Folk’’ - is her even more unfortunate son Oswald.

The trick in making Ibsen speak to modern audiences, Cato says, is finding a fresh approach.

“I grew up in Sweden, so I could do a translation of it myself,’’ Cato says by phone. “The languages are just close enough to each other so that you can understand. Even though you don’t grow up to speak [it], you grow up watching Norwegian television, and there isn’t enough of a difference between the languages that you can’t understand the language or even sort of hear the nuances in it.’’

After translating Ibsen’s words, Cato collaborated with Berkshire Theatre Festival dramaturg James Leverett to adapt the text.

“We haven’t said we’re going to place this play in 2009 or the 1950s or in any way move the action to a more modern setting, but we have done quite a bit,’’ Cato says. “We have streamlined some things and also cleaned out some of what feels like 19th-century melodramatic qualities to perhaps make it a little more active and fresh for a modern era.’’

One adjustment, he says, came in dealing with a plotline about one of the less pleasant sorts of inheritance.

“Ibsen never uses the word syphilis in the play. Of course it was, back in 1881, a fatal disease, and the negative thinkers on the play have stated that it’s now a play you don’t need to worry about anymore, because we have a cure for such things,’’ Cato says. “But of course the play isn’t really about syphilis.

“The play is much more an attack on the conventions of society,’’ he says. “We have in our adaptation tried to make that even more clear . . . so the audience doesn’t get caught in questions that are really sort of irrelevant.’’

Costumes and sets are simplified and stylized, Cato adds, to enable the production to straddle Ibsen’s era and our own. “We’re very far from a realistic Norwegian drawing room,’’ he says.

The actors, too, have been steered away from a simple period approach. “It isn’t experimental in the sense that they will be jumping up and down as they say their lines or anything, but it is an approach to get to the core passions in the play,’’ the director explains.

Harrison has relished working on the production. “It’s a great adaptation,’’ he says. “It’s really exciting to work on. It’s really visceral, it’s really fast-paced, and it cuts straight to the bones of the play. It’s certainly much easier to act than many of the other translations I have studied before I got Anders’s.’’

“I think a lot of excess has been stripped away. But the intention is the same,’’ Harrison adds. “Even line by line, for most of the play, the beats are the same. They happen quicker and it seems more organic when you’re acting it.’’

Just how contemporary does it feel? “In the playing of it, it feels very contemporary in its energy,’’ the actor says. “But nothing specific about it sounds like 2009. There’s no slang.’’

Tickets and information: 413-298-5576, www.berkshiretheatre.org

A resident troupe at the Boston Center for the Arts, the company will present four main-stage productions at the BCA Plaza Theatre, starting with two New England premieres: “The Overwhelming,’’ a thriller by J.T. Rodgers set in Rwanda just before the genocide (Oct. 30-Nov. 21), and “The Good Negro,’’ Tracey Scott Wilson’s drama set in civil-rights-era Birmingham, Ala. (Jan. 15-Feb. 6). Next comes “The Emancipation of Mandy and Miz Ellie,’’ a world premiere by Lois Roach set before and after the Emancipation Proclamation (April 30-May 22), followed by “Grimm,’’ a world premiere collection of short plays by Boston playwrights including Lydia R. Diamond, Melinda Lopez, and Ronan Noone, inspired by their favorite Brothers Grimm fairy tales (July 16-Aug. 14).

Of four works billed as “Second Stage’’ productions, three are coproductions with Phoenix Theatre Artists. “The Superheroine Monologues II’’ brings back a revamped version of John Kuntz and Rick Park’s hit parody from last season (BCA Plaza, Sept. 10-26). “Christmas Belles,’’ by Jessie Jones, Nicholas Hope, and Jamie Wooten, a former “Golden Girls’’ writer, promises wacky holiday comedy with three Texas sisters (Boston Playwrights Theatre, Nov. 27-Dec. 19). “Apple,’’ a New England premiere by Canada’s Vern Thiessen, is described as “a haunting tale of sex, secrets, and second chances’’ (Boston Playwrights Theatre, March 12-April 3). Finally, “ARTiculation,’’ an interactive slam/performance, returns for three nights (BCA Plaza, Nov. 8, Jan. 24, May 9).

Information: 617-292-7110, www.companyone.org