Ghost Quartet

Ghost Quartet is a musical song cycle written and composed by Dave Malloy. The show is described as "a song cycle about love, death, and whiskey. A camera breaks and four friends drink in four interwoven narratives spanning seven centuries."

Ghost Quartet is a musical song cycle written and composed by Dave Malloy. The show is described as "a song cycle about love, death, and whiskey. A camera breaks and four friends drink in four interwoven narratives spanning seven centuries."

Synopsis

The story is told by four storytellers who portray multiple characters. It spans seven centuries and does not take place in any chronological order.

Original cast and characters

Ghost Quartet is‍ Brent Arnold (vocals, cello, guitar, erhu, dulcimer, percussion) Brittain Ashford (vocals, autoharp, keyboard, percussion) Gelsey Bell (vocals, metallophone, Celtic harp, accordion, percussion) Dave Malloy (vocals, piano, keyboard, ukulele, percussion) Each actor plays multiple roles; in the script, the following character allocation is used: Brent: Shah Zaman, Bear, The Fool, The Pusher Brittain: Dunyazad, Rose Red, (Starchild), Roxie, The Photographer/Rose Gelsey: Scheherazade, Pearl White, Soldier, Lady Usher, The Victim/Pearl Dave: Monk, The Astronomer, Edgar, The Driver

Musical numbers

Side 1 1. "I Don't Know" 2. "The Camera Shop" 3. "Starchild" 4. "Subway" 5. "Usher, Part 1" 6. "Soldier & Rose" 7. "Any Kind of Dead Person" Side 2 1. "The Astronomer" 2. "Family Meeting" 3. "Four Friends" 4. "Fathers & Sons" 5. "Usher, Part 2" 6. "The Telescope" 7. "Tango Dancer" 8. "Monk" Side 3 1. "Lights Out" 2. "The Photograph" 3. "Bad Men" 4. "Usher, Part 3" 5. "Prayer" Side 4 1. "Hero" 2. "Midnight" 3. "The Wind & Rain"

Influences

The piece draws on numerous sources of inspiration, including Arabian Nights, Matsukaze (a Japanese Noh drama), Grimms' Fairy Tales, Edgar Allan Poe's "The Fall of the House of Usher", James Joyce's Ulysses, Rosemary Timperley's "Harry", Thelonious Monk's "Ruby, My Dear", "Epistrophy", and "'Round Midnight", The Twilight Zone (particularly "The After Hours" and "In His Image"), 2001: A Space Odyssey, David Bowie's Ziggy Stardust, Stephen Sondheim's Into the Woods, Cosmos (both the Carl Sagan and Neil DeGrasse Tyson versions), Stephen King's Dark Tower series, The Legend of Zelda and Castlevania, Neil Gaiman's Sandman, Bill Willingham's Fables, Ken Wilber's A Brief History of Everything, Tina Satter's Seagull (Thinking of You), Frozen, R. Umar Abbasi's NY Post photo, and "The Wind & Rain", a 17th-century English murder ballad. The music is scored for four voices, cello, guitars, dulcimer, Celtic harp, erhu, autoharp, piano, keyboards and percussion, and is inspired by murder ballads, doo-wop, angular bebop, Chinese folk, Islamic adhan, and the music of Bernard Herrmann and George Crumb.

Productions

The piece premiered in 2014 at the Bushwick Starr. The production starred Brent Arnold, Brittain Ashford, Gelsey Bell, and Dave Malloy, and was directed by Annie Tippe. Christopher Bowser was the production designer and James Harrison Monaco was the dramaturg. The show was remounted at the McKittrick Hotel, home of Sleep No More, in January 2015 and ran through May 2015. Throughout 2015 the show went on tour, playing at various venues in New York State including Mt. Tremper Arts in Mt. Tremper NY (July 2015), American Repertory Theater's Club Oberon in Cambridge, MA (September 2015), San Francisco's Curran Theatre (October 2015), and the Edinburgh Festival Fringe (August 2016). The show was also presented for a month-long engagement at the New York Theatre Workshop in October 2017, where it launched the inaugural season of Next Door at NYTW, a "new works program that provides a creative home for artists and theatre companies who produce their own work" in a 75-seat black box theater space. As stated on Gelsey Bell's Instagram, the run sold out within half an hour. Additional tickets were added for November 2017 and the show toured to the Seattle Theatre Group in January 2018. The Chicago premiere of Ghost Quartet was presented from July 12 through August 17, 2019, by Black Button Eyes Productions. The cast included Rachel Guth, TJ Anderson, Alexander Ellsworth, and Amanda Raquel Martinez, who won a Joseph Jefferson Award for Best Performance in a Principal Role (Musical). The Production was also nominated for Best Production of a Musical, Best Ensemble, Best Direction of a Musical for Ed Rutherford, Best Music Direction for Nick Sula, and Best Projection Design for G "Max" Marvin IV. An Australian production premiered in Melbourne's Gasworks Arts Park on August 14, 2019, by the Antipodes Theatre Company featuring David Butler, Melissa David, Patrick Schnur and Willow Sizer. This production was revived in November 2021 at the Meat Market Stables in North Melbourne with returning cast members David Butler, Patrick Schnur and Willow Sizer and new cast member, HaNy Lee. The production was revived again in January 2025, playing Sydney's Hayes Theatre with returning cast members Butler, Lee and Sizer being joined by Cameron Bajraktarevic-Hayward. Understudies for this Sydney season were Sam Hamilton, Charlotte Kerr and Felix Star. Ghost Quartet made its Canadian debut in Toronto on October 5, 2019, presented by Crow's Theatre and Eclipse Theatre Company, directed by Marie Farsi and featuring Beau Dixon, Hailey Gillis, Kira Guloien, and Andrew Penner. Ghost Quartet premiered in London as the inaugural production of the newly refurbished Boulevard Theatre on October 24, 2019, and closed on January 4, 2020. In June 2025, the original stars Malloy, Arnold, Ashford, and Bell will reunite at Green-Wood Cemetery for three performances in honor of the ten year anniversary since the premiere.

Notable casts

Critical response

The piece was well received by the New York press; Ben Brantley in the New York Times called it "rapturous... this happily haunted song cycle speaks in many styles. The voguish term "mash-up" doesn't begin to capture its breadth or its quirky sincerity... Ghost Quartet uses languages as varied as gospel, folk ballads, honky-tonk anthems of heartbreak, electropop, doo-wop and jazz à la Thelonious Monk... directed with unobtrusive cunning by Annie Tippe... Mr. Malloy is infectiously in love with the dark arts of storytelling in all its forms..."

Recordings

On October 31, 2014, the album was released by the ensemble via Bandcamp. On July 1, 2016, a live cast recording from the show's run at the McKittrick Hotel was released. On March 15, 2020, during the COVID-19 pandemic, Dave Malloy uploaded a full video recording of the same live performance on his YouTube channel.

Awards and nominations

Original Off-Broadway production

Original Cambridge Production

References

Text derived from https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?oldid=1373938591 under CC BY-SA 4.0; modifications have been made.