If you attend Ghost Light, currently onstage through Oct. 31 at 59E59, you should be looking for “a little bit of strange,” like the play's two main
characters who go to a seedy motel room—complete with flickering light
and ceiling mirror. In
their case, it's an unlikely affair in which they dip outside their usual social
circles in order to get something they want. But in your case, it being
so close to Halloween, you probably want the kind of strange that just
comes out and says Boo! already. Luckily, neither you nor they get the
expected, making way for a tantalizing, utterly absorbing hour. But the
allure of the crowd-pleasing, cheap scare is a strong one, my friends,
and it’s no surprise that it even seduces José Zayas, this show's otherwise-precise
director, in the end.
It's a shame, considering the play begins on such a high note due to the
relationship of Brian and Natalie, played plainly and deeply by Bryant
Mason and Kate Benson. A romantic entanglement between an actor and a
playwright might seem only natural at first, but this dim room bluntly
reveals just how deep and envious a bitter writer’s feelings can run,
as well as an actor’s self-aware manipulation of his charms. The
affair, and the taut verbal sparring that precedes and follows, is a
layered, unnerving and accomplished conflict of outlooks,
psychological profiles and sexual pull.
A ringer for Rachel Griffith's Six Feet Under character (in physical
appearance, neurosis and mannerisms), Benson anchors the cast with her
deft uncoiling of Natalie’s personal demons. She convincingly envies
Brian’s success, while mocking his earnest attitudes that got him
there. Her self-hatred toward this “trouble censoring” is also
palpable, and her surprising sensitivity to being called "a bitch"
effectively simple. Her performance culminates at the end of the
couple’s haunting sex scene (for once, the “warning: nudity” sign out
front actually referred to more than hoped for), when Natalie looks
up at the ceiling mirror and sees a ghost staring back. To her, it's
practically a given.
Giddy security guard Marty (Hugh Sinclair) amps up this terror of identity, confirming the ghost's reality in the room, while also affirming the audience’s worst fears for the characters. The way Marty views it, celebrity Brian is like an air conditioner, giving off his “own fucking air” and thinks being “pumped” must have made Natalie feel accepted and “real” in a way she never has before. Brian defends Natalie at first against this stranger, but Marty's incredible mix of innocence and perverseness easily gets Brian to succumb to charms of his own.
But as horrific as it is to watch these compelling characters with believable talent and desire debased to their most negative components, what’s really horrible is when the play itself gets debased by a couple of big horror twists (that I won't reveal). While fun, these details unnecessarily discontinue the threads set up throughout the whole show and, criminally, the ghost that once so deliciously stood for Natalie’s negativity, instead eclipses it completely. At one point, Brian tells aspiring-horror-writer Marty that ghosts in plays are “banal,” and this one, frustratingly, follows suit.
anonymous
