My friend and I had cool seats -- yeah, it was cold in our high up area, you know, those "filler" seats. When my pal and I spotted an ex SF mayor, in a prime orchestra seat, who had an empty chair next to him, well, after intermission we had to move down and into close-up views of this amazing and beautifully designed, elegantly staged play. I just love experiencing staging from a variety of vantage points. Staging tonight included swift, silent, minimal scene changes, and otherworldly surprises. There's fog, there are frightening gun shots, there's a coffin that moves up from a platform. There are even televisions - first an old one from the 1960s, then a flat screen one - playing snippets of TV shows from several eras, and what's played on them becomes part of the rich scene-setting dialog. There's a cafe, and then another. Which one was Starbucks? Which one Pete's?
At one level, "Ghost Light" is about brain development, and it's actually discussed with enchanting humor. It's always about love. It's about how - no matter what we do to stop our brains from channeling images, audio, and invasive dream sequences - we cannot do this forever, nor without consequence. In the end, we become the humans we are, based, in part, on the lives we have witnessed and absorbed. This play shows how - if we are fortunate - we may honor our ancestors and basic elements of truth and survival.
What's a ghost light, anyway? It's that light always on in the theater, even when no one is rehearsing or performing. It's also subject to interpretation.
For more on "Ghost Light" go to: http://www.berkeleyrep.org/season/1112/5357.asp
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