One afternoon, Lily Rabe and Hamish Linklater took their seven-year-old daughter to rehearsal for their newest collaboration, Ghosts at Lincoln Center Theater. Says Linklater, his eyes alight, “She was like, ‘All the people at the theatre are so great!’ And I was like, ‘Well, do you know why? It’s because theatre people never grow up.’”
When asked if they want their own kids to go into show business, Linklater gives an immediate and happy yes, while Rabe is more cautious. “I would certainly want for them to find whatever it is that leaves them with the same feeling we have coming back from a day of rehearsal,” she says.
Rabe admits that feeling has left her crying at the end of certain days, out of the joy of being in a play again, and also the sadness at when it’ll be over: "I really don't ever want it to end."
Both Rabe and Linklater have storied backgrounds on the stage—they first met in 2010 doing The Merchant of Venice at Shakespeare in the Park, the one with Al Pacino which transferred to Broadway. But after falling in love, the pair took a break from stage work to focus more on their growing family, taking more screen work in the process—most recently, Linklater received acclaimed for playing a serial killer priest in Midnight Mass while Rabe played Jessica Lange's daughter in The Great Lillian Hall. Rabe's last stage credit was in 2015 while Linklater's was in 2019, though they come back to New York to see shows and attend the Tony Awards.
“When we did Cymbeline [in 2015 at Shakespeare in the Park], I was becoming a stepmother,” says Rabe, touching Linklater's arm as she reflects. “We’ve since had three children, and so now we have four children…It wasn’t a conscious break, but certainly made it harder to think, ‘Oh yeah, we’ll just move across the country and do a play.’ I’m so glad that this is the first play I’m doing as a mother.”
That might be a strange statement to say if you know Ghosts by Henrik Ibsen, currently running through April 26 at Lincoln Center Theater, in a new translation by Mark O’Rowe. In Ghosts, Rabe plays Helena, whose son comes back from Paris with an unfortunate secret, something which makes her fear that he is becoming his deceased, disgraceful father. Meanwhile, Linklater plays Engstrand, who is trying to connect with his daughter who is pulling away from him (while also carrying a heavy secret of his own). While it tackles some heavy topics—such as incest, patriarchy, faith—Ghosts can be seen as a story of what children inherit from their parents, both good and bad. The cast also includes Billy Crudup, Ella Beatty, and Levon Hawke, under the direction of Jack O'Brien.
Rabe and Linklater admit they hadn't previously read Ghosts (though Rabe had done A Doll's House before). Then again, Ghosts tends to be overshadowed by A Doll's House, which Ibsen wrote right before; and An Enemy of the People, which he wrote after. But in 2023, after O'Brien had directed a reading of a play by Linklater called Paris, Actors!, the couple were hungry to work with the Tony-winning director again. O'Brien suggested Ghosts and brought it to Lincoln Center. Rabe and Linklater were immediately taken with the script.
When read in conjunction with Doll's House, where audiences in 1879 were shocked that Nora chooses to leave her husband and family at the end of the play, Ghosts can be seen as a response to the repressive mores of society, which harms the people in it. In Ghosts, Helena tries to leave her husband, who is a philanderer, but is pressured to stay. That choice has negative ramifications on her son.
Or as Linklater colorfully puts it: "Everyone got mad that Nora left and so Ibsen's like, 'Alright, I'll make her stay the next time, see if you like that. It's going to be a horror show!' And then he's like, 'Oh, oh, you didn't like it that she stayed? Well, the next thing is An Enemy of the People! Try out Dr. Stockmann, see if he makes you happy.'" As Rabe chuckles, Linklater dials it back, with a bit of chagrin: "Sorry, I was not going to go on an Ibsen riff, I promise."
But the riff is welcomed, with Rabe adding: "There's such tremendous connective tissue...You feel the characters, but you feel, so much, his conversation with his audience and his evolution and his response and his confronting everything that came towards him. And there's something tremendous about that. You feel his heartbeat underneath everything."
While Ghosts has provided the kind of dramatic meat that both of these artists thrive on, they admit trying to balance family and a play together has been challenging. First, they had to move back to New York from Los Angeles. And it's been a lot of multitasking—speaking to them for this story, after rehearsals in early February, their youngest interrupted because he wanted to watch The Magic School Bus (Linklater carried him off while Rabe continued speaking).
Their last project was a film they co-directed called Downtown Owl (which Rabe also starred in). From that, they learned that perhaps they should avoid being on the exact same schedule, for the sake of the kids. It's a lesson they promptly disregarded when Ghosts came around. “We were like, ‘Oh yeah, we do things together all the time!’ And then it’s like, ‘Oh no, you should really alternate,’” admits Linklater.
While her partner tends to have a more chaotic approach to answering questions, Rabe is more contemplative, answering: "The path of least resistance is never a path we seem to go towards in our careers. And so deciding to direct a movie together and act in it..."
Chimes in Linklater, "And Lily had just given birth."
Continues Rabe: "We just like to be standing at the bottom of a mountain looking up where we can't see the top. Moving our kids across country in winter to our favorite city in the world, and doing Ibsen and being on the same schedule again—it feels sort of senseless, but also completely right, and so grounding. Something that we both chase as artists are places where we get to use every part of ourselves and discover parts of ourselves that we've never used before and don't even know if we have...And [Ghosts] is that. Doing a play, you're not waiting for a trailer knock to sort of go and have an easy day and shoot a scene for a couple of hours and go home. That's never my idea of a great day of work."
Says Linklater gently, looking at Rabe: "You want your days to be relentless."
She nods with a smile, "Yeah...."
So yes, while it's admittedly hectic and the two have had to rely on the patience of their babysitters (and "a lot of popsicle sticks and scotch tape" says Linklater)—there's nowhere these distinguished actors would rather be.
“I think, inevitably, we will want to keep doing plays together," says Rabe warmly, as Linklater is in the next room with their kids. "And certainly, now having come back, I can’t imagine ever being away this long again, because there’s nowhere I feel more like myself than doing a play in New York. And even more so now having my kids here with me while I’m doing it.”
