Stepping into the New York Theatre Workshop’s tiny Fourth Street Theatre is immediately unlike anything that you will experience on Broadway. The stage is nonexistent--or, rather, the whole little room is the stage, with chairs and cushions for the audience sitting arranged in an intimate semicircle. The only illumination comes from small chandeliers and perforated lanterns hung from the ceiling, The myriad instruments of performers are arranged throughout, with the piano bench of Dave Malloy--the writer of the show, and also the mind behind the Tony-nominated Natasha, Pierre, & the Great Comet of 1812--perched right next to the seat that I took. My five friends and I took up an entire row of seats--one of only nine.
This is a vastly different vibe than that of the recently closed Great Comet, where over a thousand seats wound across the orchestra, mezzanine, and balcony levels of Broadway’s Imperial Theatre. That isn’t to say that it’s less impressive--on the contrary, the intimacy of a tiny theatre (officially termed to be “off-off-Broadway”) makes Ghost Quartet an even more compelling experience than the masterpiece that was Comet.
From the moment Dave Malloy himself walked into the room to greet the audience, it was clear that this would be unlike any show that has ever been on Broadway proper. He had neither a mic nor stage makeup, and he made eye contact with each of us as he introduced his show in a natural, somewhat awkward voice. He and the three other actors--Brittain Ashford, Gelsey Bell, and Brent Arnold--took their seats, Malloy gazed at the keys of his piano for several seconds, and, without further ado, the quartet launched into the dizzying quilt of interwoven stories and songs that would span the next ninety minutes.
Describing the actual plot of Ghost Quartet is near enough impossible. In the second song, Gelsey Bell--as Pearl, one of her many characters in the show--proclaims in her signature ringing voice that “This is a circular story,” and even that much is oversimplifying it. Ghost Quartet is the story of two sisters--who are also two lovers, two friends, and a mother and daughter, as their souls meet again and again throughout a series of lifetimes that transcend chronology. Malloy’s lyrics guide us through several simultaneous narratives, including but not limited to a highly altered Arabian Nights, a trippy take on Poe’s The Fall of the House of Usher, and a modern thread about a woman who is killed by a subway train. Challenging the definition of theatre itself, the show surprises our every sense: the actors distribute whiskey to the audience, share their percussion instruments with the front row, and belt out heart-wrenching notes that straddle the line between singing and screaming. At times, it all grows so loud that it hurts. A significant portion of the show is performed in complete darkness; other moments utilize the subtlest of spotlights, washing the actors’ features into a phantasmic glow.
In spite of this overwhelming intricacy--or perhaps because of it--the emotional punch delivered by the end of the show is an astounding one. The actors are close enough that they can and will make direct, prolonged eye contact with each member of the audience through their copious tears. And one doesn’t need to have a grasp of the characters to cry alongside them: the multifaceted quality of the four actors’ personas leads to a profound human connection with every one of them. “I will try to forgive myself / For living in the dark / For my loss of wonder / For forgetting how to play. / I will try to forgive myself / for being absent in public / and bored before stars,” they chant in chilling harmony as the show draws to a close, and their words are striking in their universality. Malloy expertly weaves art out of disenchantment and depression--arguably the least artistic state of being that there is.
Throughout its twenty songs and tiny handful of spoken scenes, Ghost Quartet laments and cherishes everything from alcoholism to phone addiction to insomnia to the loss of a child. It defies any traditional musical style, utilizing erhus and Celtic harps alongside synth keyboards and metallophones. Past, present, and tentative future play together in what Malloy has described as “a song cycle about love, death, and whiskey.”
Ghost Quartet is intimate, transcendent, and likely not just to be unlike anything you’ve ever seen before, but rather to be that very work of art that a part of you was always searching for, and never believed it could find.
Ghost Quartet performs at NYTW through November 3rd. The original cast recording is available on Bandcamp.
