There is a corridor at Lincoln Center's Claire Tow Theater right beyond the stage door where a rush of actors prepare to go on, a few minutes before a performance is about to start.
The lovely "Ghostlight" takes audiences to that corridor and to the ghosts of actors past who haunt it. We watch as they rush from dressing room to stage, taking off costume pieces and putting them on again. A stage hand runs with a tree branch from one room to another. An angry actress tacks up a star outside her own dressing room. An actor stumbles down the hallway with a magazine and a cup of coffee, clad only in a towel.
We get to see it all, from the costume shop to the rehearsal room. We hear the stage manager call the show. We are instructed on how to move scenery and how to punch a time card. We hold props and listen in on lovers and watch as an old timey-star ingests too much laudanum. (The audience is broken into groups; like many immersive shows, most groups see a slightly different set of scenes).
These are the ghosts of the theater, wandering on stage and off across different eras, one wearing an Elizabethan ruffle, another the blue uniform of a contemporary janitor. But occasionally those ghosts look at us as if WE are the ones haunting the Claire Tow — as if we're the surprise. As if they wonder what we can tell them about the magic of the theater.
But the most powerful parts of the experience are the intimate monologues, when we sit with performers who describe one moment: maybe it's the writing of a scene, maybe it's the moment a needy actor thinks back on her roles. "Ghostlight" is enthralling not only because it brings us inside the warren of rooms normally off limits to the audience — but also because it brings us inside the minds and hearts of the actors and playwrights and ushers who inhabit them.
Conceived, directed and choreographed by Zach Morris and Jennine Willett; written by Zach Morris; created in collaboration with the company
Third Rail Project at the Claire Tow Theater at Lincoln Center, 150 W. 65th St.