GHOST QUARTET
Music, Lyrics and Text by Dave Malloy
Directed by Marie Farsi
Produced by Crow’s Theatre and Eclipse Theatre Company
Featuring Beau Dixon, Hailey Gillis, Kira Guloien and Andrew Penner
A haunted song cycle about love, death and whiskey.
A camera breaks and four friends drink, in interwoven narratives spanning seven centuries: a warped fairy tale about two sisters, a treehouse astronomer and a lazy evil bear; a retelling of Poe’s The Fall of the House of Usher; a purgatorial intermezzo about Scheherazade; and a contemporary fable about a subway murder.
Murder ballads, doo-wop, jazz noise, and raucous campfire drinking songs collide in the Canadian premiere of this surreal chamber musical from Dave Malloy, composer of Natasha, Pierre & The Great Comet of 1812.
Creative Team
Production Design Patrick Lavender
Musical Direction Andrew Penner
Winner of The Toronto Theatre Critics’ Award
for Best Director of a Musical
Winner of the Dora Award for Outstanding Direction
in the Musical Theatre division
“★★★1/2 - A whiskey-fuelled jam session with dreamlike logic and visuals... another win for Crow’s Theatre.”
“A spellbinding and spooky evening of song, perfect for Halloween month... pure bliss.”
“There’s a feeling I sometimes get at the theatre, and almost only at the theatre, that I am addicted to – and which probably accounts for my lifelong patronage, as both amateur and professional playgoer.
It’s a mixture of pleasure and surprise that manifests itself along my upper spine – but “tingling” doesn’t do it justice. It’s got a depth to it, as if umami were a physical sensation. It is accompanied by a fleeting sense of understanding, of something small or something big about being human, and it is what tips a diverting piece of entertainment over the line into an experience of capital-A art for me.
I got this feeling a few times last fall at Toronto’s Crow’s Theatre while watching a mysterious chamber musical called Ghost Quartet.
[...] As it turns out, I don’t even have to take a bunny hop to see Ghost Quartet once more. That Crow’s Theatre production, originally co-produced with Eclipse Theatre Company, has now been adapted into a concert film by its director, Marie Farsi.”
