Ghost: The Musical
Debuts at Drayton
There is much to praise in Drayton’s “Ghost: The Musical” and at the top of that list is the dynamic Shahi Teruko, a powerhouse of musical comedy.
This performer commands the stage in a way few others can, with her presence and voice that seems to fill every inch of space. And she is hilariously funny as Oda Mae Brown, a shifty storefront psychic with a long record of fraud and who eagerly rips off the bereaved. When Oda Mae suddenly hears the voice of an actual dead person, murder victim Sam Wheat, she freaks and the comedy is unleashed.
This production with its 10person cast, is the Canadian debut, directed by Tracey Flye and based on the 1990 film starring Whoopi Goldberg in the part of Oda Mae. Those are mighty big shoes to fill for Teruko, but she makes the part her own.
The storyline mirrors the movie: young couple Molly and Sam are deeply in love and purchase a New York City industrial loft as their new home. Kudos here to set designer Samantha Burson and lighting designer Kaileigh Krysztoflak for creating the perfect backdrop as the scenes unfold from inside the unit to the outside on the streets.
After Sam is murdered on their way home from a restaurant, Molly spins into a depression. She is comforted by the couple’s best friend, Carl Bruner, played by Jeremy Walmsley. What Molly doesn’t know is that Carl was responsible for Sam’s death, having hired a thug to steal his wallet hoping to find computer access codes for a $10-million bank account. The thug, Willie Lopez, played by Darren Burkett, goes too far, wrestles with Sam and the gun goes off.
For a stage version, this part gets tricky as Sam has to be shown leaving his own body, but his corpse must remain on the street attended to by Molly and the first responders. Drayton chose to use a rather cheesy looking plastic mannequin instead of another actor playing the part. It’s almost comic, this complete stiff. But that’s about the only issue with the play.
Sam, played by Graham Scott Fleming, is desperate to get the message to Molly that her life is in danger from Carl and Willie, but of course she can’t hear him, hence Sam decides to speak through an unwilling Oda Mae.
In his journeys to find out what actually happened to him, Sam encounters other ghosts: a guy in a hospital room waiting for his wife to die, too. This part, played
by Tim Funnell, is short but Funnell is very funny. Then there is Jeremy Carver-James as an obnoxious subway ghost who has learned to move objects, a skill Sam is desperate to learn. Carver-Jones is powerful as the angry ghost who, like Sam, wasn’t ready to die. Both are stuck in this in-between place between life and death.
Jocelyn Gauthier in her Drayton debut, plays Molly Jensen, a young woman who is just settling into a life she always dreamed about when in a flash, it’s all gone. She is desperate to believe Oda Mae but the police convince her otherwise.
Fleming is superb as Sam. He has a sweet, boy-next-door charm, his vocals are powerful and when he sings with Gauthier, their harmonies stir the emotions. There are moral messages in this production, the idea evil will pay for its sins in the afterlife. When Willie is killed, red lights on stage indicate where he is going. When Carl is killed, Walmsley performs with such believable fear as his body is being dragged into the dark underworld the scene feels very real and very disturbing.
“Ghost: The Musical” has all the hallmarks of great theatre: pathos, comedy plus a great musical score.