If you could be any kind of dead person, what kind would you be? Spoiler: you want to be a ghost, the kind that goes “hoo hoo hoo all night long.”
So say the lyrics in "Any Kind of Dead Person," one of the many catchy tunes in Oakland Theater Project and New Performance Tradition's production of Dave Malloy's Ghost Quartet.
The show is an intoxicating, musical ride through a series of circular stories that span several centuries that include a splash of Edgar Allen Poe, a bear, a pair of sisters, and a deep admiration for whisky.
A cozy living room greets us as we walk on to director William Thomas Hodgson's set to our seats. Musical instruments line the “room” around a thoughtfully placed fireplace in the center. Lamps and faded carpets put me in mind of a beloved elder relative's home.
Hodgson's insanely talented, five-person cast work magic upon us. We go from giggling one moment to holding back tears the next. Veronica Renner and Monica Rose Slater are arresting as they morph from one believable character to another without a single costume change. To watch them sing is to see two masters of their craft reveling in joyful harmonies. Cellist Ami Nashimoto is the pied piper whose playing leads us through the fairy tales and myths that tie the story together. Rinde Eckert and Michael Perez swirl around pushing and poking the story into place like master sculptors. A flurry of instruments pass through all of their hands. Accordion, erhu, slide guitar, autoharp, and all manner of percussion instruments are just a sampling of what these five get up to. Although, in my humble opinion, there was not nearly enough theremin. There never is, really.
All of the performers jump from instrument to instrument as often as the music changes in emotion. Winding its way through time with little regard for linear story, the show is framed like a concert album. Music flows from the cast members that range from heart wrenching arias, electropop, jazz, and folk songs. It's a hallucinatory fever dream that bounces emotions on the highs and lows of its endlessly haunting stories.
It's not a narrative, not really. We receive hints of them as the songs flow over us. A camera is broken. An astronomer looks at the same stars for seven hundred years. He loves one sister more than the other. A bear who is neither crazy or a murderer (but who loves honey) waits on the edge of one story, then another. Scheherazade appeases the Shah with a tale for a second time. The House of Usher is still bleak. Death is all around and we still aren't quite clear on who the dead really are.
In some ways the narrative can be a bit jarring, especially as you invest in one story, only to be whisked away to another time and place. It's a collection of poetry, morphed into an album of song and finished with interwoven thoughts that seem to come from the author himself. I found I was often confused and lost, yet waiting eagerly to be pleasantly bamboozeled all over again. It's a ghost story without moralizing. There is not right or wrong in death. Ghost Quartet gives us much food for thought. It will play at Oakland Theater Project through Nov. 24 and Dec. 5-8 at ODC in San Francisco.
Tickets: $10—60 online; tickets and info at oaklandtheaterproject.org/ghost, by calling (510) 646-1126, or by emailing boxoffice@oaklandtheaterproject.org.
Location
Oakland performances will take place at OTP’s theater located at Oakland Theater Project at FLAX art & design
1501 Martin Luther King Jr Way
Oakland, CA 94612
