A mother (Laura de Carteret) and her three adult daughters: L (Siobhan O’Malley), M (Kelly Van der Burg), and B (Sarah Wilson) gather as a family to mark the anniversary of a death. As they talk and unravel past events, the play explores grief, memory, and the pressures on modern women who want to have it all.
Susanna Fournier’s Ghosts of My House is a complex and demanding piece. It shifts between unnerving, unsettling moments and flashes of humour, while breaking the fourth wall from the top of the show. At times, the actors address audience members directly, establishing an atmosphere in which spectators are made aware of their own presence in the room.
Under Leora Morris’s assured direction, the four performers guide the audience through fractured accounts of identity, family history and loss. The production can be raw and painful to watch, and its emotional force is evident in the stillness and attention it draws from the room.
Yet Ghosts of My House does not remain within conventional family drama.
After the women’s inherited and personal histories have been exposed, the performers invite audience members onto the stage to participate in a quiet act of communal rebuilding. The gesture is simple, carefully framed and theatrically effective, extending the play’s questions about the endurance of old assumptions about women without making the moment feel forced.
Ghosts of My House is likely to land differently for different spectators. Some may find its emotional impact immediate; others may need time to process the production’s layered treatment of grief, memory and self-reckoning.
The audience enters a three-quarter theatre-in-the-round configuration in the intimate McQueen auditorium. Ariel Slack’s set design is stripped bare, with two stools placed upstage near the back wall, where the play’s title and playwright are projected. Projections play an important role in the storytelling, while Darren Burkett’s lighting reflects the work’s shifting emotional temperature.
Laura de Carteret, Siobhan O’Malley, Kelly Van der Burg and Sarah Wilson deliver strong ensemble work. They listen and respond to one another with grounded believability, allowing emotional outbursts and eventual revelations to register without becoming overstated. Their command of phrasing and pauses gives the audience space to absorb the text.
The production is best approached with limited knowledge of the plot, since several of its dramatic and theatrical effects depend on discovery.
A notable theatrical shift near the end may initially seem abrupt, but it ultimately clarifies Fournier’s larger structure and leads coherently into the communal gathering that closes the piece.
In her director’s note, Morris writes that there is nowhere for the actors or audience to hide in Ghosts of My House.
That sense of exposure defines this Here For Now production. Anchored by four fine performances, Ghosts of My House is disturbing, moving and deliberately unresolved, inviting audiences to consider what remains after inherited stories have been dismantled.
Running time: approximately 70 minutes with no intermission.
The production runs to July 19 at the Rose McQueen Theatre, 24 St. Andrew Street, Stratford. For tickets: (519) 272-4368 or visit www.herefornowtheatre.com
HERE FOR NOW THEATRE presents the World Premiere
Ghosts of My House by Susanna Fournier
Directed by Leora Morris
Set Designer: Ariel Slack
Lighting Designer: Darren Burkett
Sound Designer: Adam Campbell
Associate Sound Designer: Sam Snyders
Costume Designer: Jennie Wonnacott
Stage Manager: Delaney Small
Performers: Laura de Carteret, Siobhan O’Malley, Kelly Van der Burg, Sarah Wilson
