'GHOST LIGHT,' AND SAN FRANCISCO'S FAMOUS MURDERS
Is It a Play,
or Moscone's Catharsis?
By Carol Benet
artssf.com, the independent observer of San Francisco Bay Area theater
Weeks starting Jan. 17, 2012
Vol.
14, No. 38
Tony Taccone’s quasi-biographical play “Ghost
Light” now at the
Berkeley Rep is a good idea suffering from too many ideas, defying
development. It’s impossible to make them
meaningful, even
within a canvas that is much too broad---two and a half hours with
one
intermission.
“Ghost Light”
is about the feelings, fears and other
psychological problems that tormented Jonathan Moscone after Dan White
murdered
his father, San Francisco Mayor George Moscone, in 1978.
The play is
billed as a “poetic collage of fiction and memory.” Even the word
“post-modern” is bandied around from time to time, as
if to
excuse this rather sprawling, fractured and difficult work. It is also billed as “not a docudrama,” but
it has the feeling of one, just with more Freud in it.
“Ghost Light”
offered fine actors, interesting set (Tedd
Rosenthal), video design (Maya Ciarrocchi), lighting (Christopher
Akerlind) and
costumes (Meg Neville). What was lacking
was a good script. Instead, this seemed like a workshop piece with
lots of
paring and shaping needed. Since Tony Taccone is the Artistic Director
of the
Berkeley Rep, he gets free rein to fulfill his goals in the production.
Director of
the work was Jonathan Moscone himself, credited with co-conceiving
and co-developing the work. He had been just a boy when he father was
murdered. Yes, actors get around the
stage and pop up from holes in the middle of a bed and appear as
knights ready
to play Hamlet. There is even a scene
where George Moscone comes on mouthing the words to Tony Bennett’s “I
Left My
Heart in San Francisco.” And at this point the play turns into what
Susan Sontag would have called “camp.”
What on earth were Taccone and Moscone contemplating here?
We start with
young Jon played by Tyler James Myers, an excellent
actor, who is defiantly talking to an unseen psychiatrist.
He is a teenager, very inarticulate and
negative. We follow this boy to his
adulthood (Christopher Liam Moore), when he is a director working on a
staging
of “Hamlet.” But he is stymied by the
ghost scene, hence the name of the play.
In some abstruse way, Hamlet, the ghost and the father of Hamlet
are all
implicated in Jon’s story. This is
one
of the main themes, but without much form or explanation.
Enter a rough
character in a uniform who is a prison guard (Bill
Geisslinger). He evokes the grandfather of Jon who was, in fact, a
prison guard
and a ne’er-do-well here, serving up a variation of the father theme.
Then there is
the Loverboy (Danforth Comins) theme with all the
complications of a relationship between the two men.
The film director (Peter Frechette) figures
in as of course they are filming this. Over it all is the figure of the
policeman who was with George Moscone when he was shot (Peter Macon). This is a baffling evolving role from cop to
deus
ex machina. A further complication was the murky
shifting from dream sequences to reality and back again. The
only glue in this plot
is the figure of Louise, Jon’s platonic friend, who is trying to get
him to
finish the ghost scene so the play can go on.
By the middle
of the second act, I was wishing that the play could have concluded
with the first. But I hope they will work
on this. I do think maybe Moscone was too
close to the
story to make it a work of art rather than an extended therapy session.
Catharsis is
important. But so is theater.
“Ghost Light” runs through February 19 at the Berkeley
Rep at 2025 Addison Street,
Berkeley. For info: (510) 647
-2949 or
go online.
#
© Carol Benet 2012
Carol Benet is a regular theater reviewer for artssf.com.
These critiques appearing weekly (or sometimes semi-weekly, but never
weakly)focus
on theater, dance and new musical creativity in performance, with
forays
into recordings by local artists, and a few departures into books (by
authors
of the region)as well.
#
Return
to main menu.