150 Word Review: 'Ghostlight' (2024)
Drama therapy
Ghostlight is an unpretentious tearjerker that recalls British working-class comedies from the late '90s and early 2000s, like The Full Monty or Billy Elliot. Keith Kupferer stars as a construction worker reeling from a recent tragedy and growing distant from his family. That is until he finds himself cast in a local community theater's low-budget production of Romeo and Juliet.
Kupferer's grieving father is magnetic, as is his actual daughter, Katherine May Kupferer, as his character’s youngest, a troubled theatre kid. The entire cast is quirky and nuanced, including Tara Mallen as a barely-keeping-it-together mom and wife who uncovers her husband’s deep dark secret: he’s in a play. Dolly de Leon is a blunt but charming amateur actor. Ghostlight starts as a domestic drama but builds in power as real life and Shakespeare's world begin to overlap. Directors Kelly O'Sullivan and Alex Thompson love their misfits, and you will, too.
Grief. Friendship. Jazz hands. My debut memoir, Theatre Kids, is available for purchase—it’s an awkward coming-of-age story about starving artists, outrageous drunks, and true American weirdos making art that no one wants.
I'm sure it comes as no surprise that I found Ghostlight to be immensely moving. (what, Seth loved a movie about how great the theatre is that's full of veteran theatre actors? WHO'D'A THUNK?)