Ghosts - Paperback

by Henrik Ibsen (Author), Gary Owen (Author), Gary Owen (Adapted by)

When you spend your life in thrall to a monster you find yourself trying to make monstrous things somehow bearable.

Helena is a woman on a mission. Since the death of her high-flying husband, she has dedicated herself to reclaiming his legacy. And her hard work is about to pay off, with a new children's hospital bearing his name on the brink of opening.

But when their son Oz returns to the family home for the grand unveiling, he has ambitions of his own. Ambitions that threaten to unravel their family's most tightly kept secrets.

This edition of Gary Owen's new play, a contemporary re-imagining of Ibsen's classic is published to coincide with the production run at Lyric Hammersmith Theatre in Spring 2025.

Author Biography

Gary Owen is a Welsh playwright and screenwriter. His play Romeo & Julie, ran at the National Theatre and Sherman to 5* reviews. He also wrote a radical reworking of The Cherry Orchard for the Sherman Theatre, which translated the action of the play to 1980s Pembrokeshire, at the beginning of the Thatcher era, and Killology, a co-production between the Sherman Theatre and the Royal Court, which won Outstanding Achievement in an Affiliate Theatre at the 2018 Olivier Awards.

Previously, he's written Violence and Son for the Royal Court. Violence and Son was nominated for an Olivier in 2016, and its star David Moorst won Best Emerging Talent at the Evening Standard Awards and Most Promising Newcomer at the Critics' Circle Awards for his performance as Liam. In 2015, he wrote Iphigenia in Splott for the Sherman Theatre, which was featured as one of The Guardian's 50 best theatre shows of the 21st century. After two sell-out runs at the Sherman, Iphigenia played the Edinburgh Festival as a British Council showcase pick, ran for a month the National Theatre in London, toured the UK, played at the FIND festival at Thomas Ostemeier's Schaubuhn Theatre in Berlin and at the E59E Theater in Manhattan, where it was a New York Times pick of the week. Iphigenia in Splott won the UK Theatre Best New Play award and the James Tait Black Prize for Drama, and earned its lead, Sophie Melville, a Stage Award for Acting Excellence and an Evening Standard Award nomination for Best Actress.

Gary's earlier work includes Crazy Gary's Mobile Disco, The Shadow of a Boy (winner George Devine and Meyer Whitworth awards), The Drowned World (winner Fringe First and Pearson Best Play awards), Ghost City, Mrs Reynolds and the Ruffian and Love Steals Us From Loneliness. He is a creative associate at Watford Palace Theatre, and an associate artist at the Sherman.