Helene Alving spent half a lifetime trapped in a loveless marriage. Her husband’s death has now offered her a chance to reconnect with her first love and with her estranged son. But the past is not easily left behind: the dead—people, ideas, beliefs—haunt the living. Ibsen, speaking to us from over a century ago, warns that we must reckon with who we are and what we’ve done if we are ever to be free of our ghosts.

From the outside, the Goodmans are the very picture of a normal middle-class family living in the middle of America. But under the serene surface are fault lines that will soon shake their carefully curated self-image. With an emotionally wrenching contemporary rock score, this Pulitzer Prize-winning musical exposes the sabotaging power of the American dream and the liberation that may be possible when—if —we choose to wake up.