Millennial Notes

Dave Malloy Entices, Lures Us into Looming Fantasies

by Corey Finnegan

Ever wonder what it’s like to be a ghost? Composer Dave Malloy’s hallucinatory “Ghost Quartet” offers a peek into his version of the afterlife. Five talented musicians and singers take us tripping through a kaleidoscope of half-remembered, dream-like stories that tickle our fancies.

Luckily for me, a helpful introduction to the Oakland Theater Project’s latest production was provided by a previous viewer who proclaimed: “It’s really good! Just don’t expect to know what’s going on.” With that advice in mind, I appreciate “Ghost Quartet” for what it is–a series of musical vignettes sprinkled with fragments of story. The elusive narrative winds dreamily through strange tales of despair, disappointment, and yearning, spanning centuries.

The stories progress like a theme album, melancholy dirges give way to a country tune, “I Want to Bee a Ghost.” Wonderfully versatile actor/singer/musician Veronica Renner adds her magic. “Ghost” is my favorite, a song that easily makes “ghosts” the coolest creatures in the afterlife.

Superbly talented singer Monica Rose Slater serves up some of the play’s best tunes, some beautifully sad, others quite eerie. In one song, she shines a flashlight upwards onto her face, as if she were telling a scary story around the campfire. And Slater sings a tune more haunting than any ghost story

Pianist/singer Rinde Eckert perfectly complements the two gifted female vocalists, his voice alternating between earnest and spooky. When Eckert isn’t playing the keys, he’s working a slide guitar. He sings raspy-voiced duets with Slater or Renner, making memorable music. In a supernatural duet with Renner, he asks her probing questions about the afterlife. She answers with otherworldly certainty.

For anyone counting, the fourth and fifth members of this (ahem) “Quartet” also play divinely. Ami Nashimoto plays cello to perfection. Michael Perez walks in boldly, emcee-style, singing and spinning tales. At times the stories converge, then they wildly scatter. Director William Thomas Hodgson keeps the musicians tightly on task, moving briskly from father-daughter quarrels to impending doom.

The whirligig of stories is dizzying, as actors play multiple roles, and scenes skip through time and space, mysteriously. Characters’ connections stay ambiguous and often just plain confusing.

As one character says to another: “I’m your mother, I’m your sister, I’m your best friend, I’m your child.” This sense of disorientation pervades the musical event, creating an uneasy feeling that our lives might replay old patterns of which we are only dimly aware, even after we die.

Malloy relishes sowing confusion among his listeners, although if you see the play again, it could start to make surreal sense. Thankfully, “Ghost Story” may be interesting enough to lure me back for a second round.

 

“Ghost Quartet” –music, lyrics, & text by Dave Malloy, directed by William Thomas Hodgson, co-produced with New Performance Traditions, by Oakland Theater Project, Oakland, California.

Info: oaklandtheaterproject.org – In Oakland: November 1 – 24, 2024. In San Francisco: December 5 – 8, 2024.

Cast: Rinde Eckert, Ami Nashimoto, Michael Perez, Veronica Renner, and Monica Rose Slater.

Banner photo: Monica Rose Slater. Photos: Ben Krantz Studio