Vanishing act: I just can't take this 'Ghost'

THEATER REVIEW: "Ghost" at the Oriental Theatre ★

January 09, 2014|Chris Jones
  • Actors Katie Postotnik and Steven Grant Douglas star as Molly and Sam in the national tour of "Ghost The Musical," which is adapted from the 1990 hit movie.
Actors Katie Postotnik and Steven Grant Douglas star as Molly and Sam in the national tour of "Ghost The Musical," which is adapted from the 1990 hit movie. (Joan Marcus, Joan Marcus)

Like "Love Actually," which seemed to be everyone's guilty, snuggled-up-with-a-sweetie pleasure in the United Kingdom this Christmas, the 1990 movie "Ghost" is one of those sentimental romcoms that, oh I don't know, just somehow works.

Demi Moore. Patrick Swayze. Bare flesh. A potter's wheel. Rub-a-dub-dub. You'd have to be made of clay not to feel some of that, or want some of whatever it was that they were having back during the George H.W. Bush era, if I might make a reference to another retro romcom ("When Harry Met Sally") that also, oh I don't know, just somehow works in a charming kind of way.

"Ghost The Musical," does not anyhow work. And it has no charm whatsoever. The reasons are many, and they begin with a thin-as-a-wisp score from Dave Stewart (of the Eurythmics fame, for goodness sake) and Glen Ballard and storytelling that often refuses to follow its own strictures. I could bore you for hours with the inconsistent way the rules of what a dead person can and cannot touch and do are applied in this show. Suffice to say, the dead(ish) Sam surely could make love, which his lonely girl Molly surely would like, given that he apparently can shove people around.

That's a problem with both Bruce Joel Rubin's sloppy book (inferior by far to the movie screenplay) and with the direction, from the hugely talented Matthew Warchus (the brilliant "Matilda," for goodness sake) that can only be described as lazy.

"Ghost" comes with one of those digital plaything sets that are fine if you're in Harry Potterland or wherever, hopefully in some warmer spot than here, but tend to wring the very life out of the poor live performers who are forced, in this egregious instance, to dance alongside video silhouettes doing much the same choreography, which makes the live dancers seem redundant. I'm often on guard against shows that leave most of their physical selves back on Broadway.

In the case of "Ghost," which I've now sat through twice, I was rather hoping they'd dump that Broadway set into the Hudson River and start fresh for the tour with an empty stage. OK, and a potter's wheel, being as that is needed for the one can't-miss scene in the movie which, for the record, the musical adaptation wholly and entirely misses, being as it has no earthly idea what it wants to achieve therein.

How can you possibly dump the sensuality from that? Well, pay your money for this one and you'll find out.

Alas, the vid and the tech mostly came with the non-Equity tour (the program is heavy with associate this that and the other credits). The Non-Equity tour also is the first national tour, which should tell you something about the confidence level in the material right there. The performers on view at the Oriental Theatre are promising, early-career music-theater kids. The good-looking leads (Steven Grant Douglas plays Sam and Katie Postotnik is Molly) give it a game shot, although Douglas struggles to assert himself in places and Postotnik has occasional vocal issues. The comic psychic (the Whoopi Goldberg role in the movie) is played by Carla R. Stewart, who is intermittently amusing. In a smaller venue or town, this inexperienced cast would squeak by. But at the Oriental with a $95 top, the producers are relying on some tolerance, or maybe dizziness caused by all that moving video.

If you'll pardon the self-involved rumination, the level at which I've come to despise this piece surprises me, actually.

"Ghost" is hardly the first assembly-line, movie-into-a-musical, especially when talking shows with British origins. Yet I thought the likes of "Saturday Night Fever," "Dirty Dancing" and "Flashdance," at least offered a few laughs and escape from the drudgery of a subzero workweek.

But I just can't take this "Ghost."

Around the middle of Act 2 on Wednesday night, I started to think my disposition had something to do with my urban heart being offended by the harsh tone of the show, which is dominated by twangs, crashes, graffiti and sharp visual edges. I have no idea whether the action is set in 1990, the year of the movie, or if it has been updated. Despite that pair of viewings and serious pondering on the subject, I just don't know. If 1990, then maybe there is some justification for the cold, pre-boom New York on display here: the violent streets populated by criminals and strange eccentrics (don't get me started on racial stereotypes vis-a-vis this show) and a high-tech, industrialized landscape that seems especially egregious given that Sam and Molly live in Brooklyn.

Truthful or not, such a landscape is death for a romantic comedy. Think back to "Sleepless in Seattle." It rained a lot. Rain is soft. So is clay. So is love. It's a three-D thing.

And death? Ay, there's the rub. Death has no texture, but it needs truth. "Ghost" has a moral obligation to be a better musical because this material exploits one of most intense desires: to have back in our lives a departed loved one. The idea of a further conversation with such a lost lover is potent matter for the theater, as Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein knew when they wrote the masterpiece "Carousel," wherein gentle yearning and hope triumph, and you leave desperately hoping you're not walking alone. The apparent disinterest of "Ghost The Musical" in treating that spiritual desire with dignity and sophistication is its most egregious ghoul of all.

Twitter @ChrisJonesTrib

When: Through Jan. 19

Where: Oriental Theatre, 24 W. Randolph St.

Running time: 2 hours, 15 mins.

Tickets: $27-95 at 880-775-2000 or