It’s almost inevitable that plays which a century or more ago inflamed censors – and sometimes even brought theatres to flames – will seem tame today. However, earlier this year, a South African version of Strindberg’s 1888 Swedish shocker Miss Julie managed to make its social and sexual transgressions freshly horrifying to a modern audience. And now comes a version of another scandalous Scandinavian drama – Ibsen’s Ghosts written in 1881 – which manages to give a clear sense of why it was initially banned in Norway and Britain, where a private club performance was described by one critic as concerning a subject “which is not usually discussed outside the walls of a hospital”. Henrik Ibsen (1828-1906) had a symbolist and philosophical