Volume 25 Issue 2 - October 2019

Beat by Beat | Music Theatre
Ghost Quartet and
Broken Tailbone
Two Unconventional Mixes
JENNIFER PARR
Two unconventional music theatre works opening in early
October caught my eye right away for the excitement of their
risk-taking and also for the clear desire each production has to
find new ways to involve audiences in a deeper, more immersive way.
Ghost Quartet: Dave Malloy’s Ghost Quartet, a four-person ghoststorytelling
“live concept album” presented in a joint production by
the new Eclipse Theatre Company (Kiss of the Spiderwoman at the
Don Jail) and the always innovative Crows Theatre, is the first. Malloy
is best known for his Tony Award-winning popera take on Tolstoy’s
War and Peace: Natasha, Pierre & the Great Comet of 1812.
Ghost Quartet is a smaller show but hugely ambitious within a
deceptively straightforward format. A camera breaks, and four friends
drink whiskey and tell each other ghost stories in an interwoven
narrative that spans seven centuries drawing on sources as varied as
The Arabian Nights, a retelling of Poe’s The Fall of the House of Usher,
Japanese Noh Drama, Grimmsian fairly tales, grisly urban legends
and 19th-century broadsheet ballads. The music is equally eclectic
including gospel, folk ballad, honky-tonk, electropop, doo-wop and
jazz. The cast is made up of four of Toronto’s top actor/singer/musicians:
Hailey Gillis (star of Soulpepper’s Rose), Kira Guloien (Doctor
Zhivago on Broadway, The Who’s Tommy at Stratford), and Beau
Dixon (Soulpepper’s Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom, and Harlem Duet),
led by Andrew Penner (Sunparlour Players and Harrow Fair) who is
also the music director.
Wanting to find out more about how this show works from the
inside and how they will be approaching the production, I spoke with
Andrew Penner and stage director Marie Farsi:
WN: What do you think led Dave Malloy to create this show in the
format of a “live concept album”?
Marie Farsi: It was definitely an homage to great masterpieces made
on vinyl. Dave explains that his desire was to take the narrative form
of the rock concept album “with all of its vaguery and weirdness,
symbolism and surrealism, adrenaline and angst” and theatricalize it.
In the show, each of the songs is announced by one of the performers
with its track number and title. I think the intention is to use it as a
device to reframe the narrative and encourage a looser frame of mind.
How do the different styles of music contribute to the telling of the
individual stories, and the overall theme of the show?
MF: Through different styles of music, we can paint different worlds
for the audience to travel to through their own imagination; and the
restlessness and unexpectedness of the music captures love, which is
so beautifully complicated. It makes us feel alive and invincible until
it’s gone, or stolen, or lost.
What is it like as music director, working with a cast of actor/singer/
musicians to master all these different styles?
Andrew Penner: The three other performers in the show are killers.
We made sure of that before we went ahead with the show. They’re
all amazing multi-instrumentalists with great instincts. Plus, we’re
all really hard on ourselves in the best way. The styles are very genre
spanning and we are trying to bend them as far as we can.
Will the staging be traditional or more immersive than we
usually expect to mimic the telling of ghost stories and how they
interconnect?
MF: The staging will definitely be more immersive. Among the
Ghost Quartet
multiple storylines, one is simply the four performers (Hailey, Kira,
Beau and Andrew) as friends, jamming, drinking whiskey and telling
each other ghost stories. So I anchored the reality of the show in the
“here and now” of the theatre: instruments, microphones, cables are
all on stage. However, I’d say our production is even more theatrical
than the original, which was presented at the McKittrick Hotel and
had a real concert feel, because I’m creating a secret hideout for the
band, placing it in a more natural environment. I was inspired by the
Black Forest associated with the Brothers Grimm, and the stories we
tell around the campfire. We’re bringing the magic of fairytales and
the wonder of haunted forests a bit more to life on stage!
Have the different styles of music led to different styles of staging
within the one show?
MF: I’d say the different worlds have led to different styles of music
and staging. Many ghosts haunt (or come visit?) our four actor-musicians
each night. We eventually understand piece by piece that the
characters are reincarnations of each other, and ultimately past lives of
the performers. Some of those past realities have very distinct atmospheres
(created musically and sonically of course) that I am amplifying
through visuals.
How do you expect audiences to react to this mix of storytelling
elements?
MF: I’m expecting total disorientation and confusion at first, but
in a very good and intended way. The show is a huge mishmash of
various horror and fantasy tropes, and taps into our irresistible curiosity
for mysteries (the murder kind along with the mystery of ghosts,
life, love and death). The show is a very well-constructed puzzle
to solve as well as an exciting adventure quest for the main character
Rose. I have no doubt that the audience will be wrapped in the
dreamy and dark.
Ghost Quartet runs October 5 to November 3 at Streetcar
Crowsnest: crowstheatre.com.
30 | October 2019 thewholenote.com