Maine State Music Theatre managed to live up to that challenge with season-opener “Ghost the Musical,” which closed on Saturday and now goes on the road. The production represented the culmination of two years of work in conjunction with the Fulton Theatre of Lancaster, Pennsylvania, and transformed what had been a Broadway disappointment into an intimate experience that explored new depths of characterization while maintaining the charm of the original. While the production didn’t quite hit it out of the park, it came close, and provided a great kick-off to MSMT’s 2016 season.
The show opened at the Fulton in early May with the same cast and crew, so by the time of last Friday’s performance, it moved at a smooth, fluid pace. The interaction between the lead actors showed a high level of synchronicity not only amongst themselves, but with the audience: Tender moments were followed by just the proper amounts of pregnant pauses to intensify the emotion; comedic repartees were delivered with expert timing to amplify the punch lines. The pacing served to bring the proper combination of comedy and tragedy necessary for such a storyline; if not done well, it could have easily veered into schmaltz.
Gregg Goodbrod – who is now practically a veteran of the Pickard Theater, with four MSMT productions under his belt – plays Sam, the fun-loving tech wizard with a heart of gold who dies protecting his live-in girlfriend, Molly (Liz Shivener) and must both protect her and avenge his death before he can move on to the afterlife. While the couple doesn’t exude the chemistry of Patrick Swayze and Demi Moore from the film, they do connect with enough intensity to make a romance seem believable — by the end of Friday’s performance, Shivener’s tears were clearly real, revealing that she had tapped into a deep well of true emotion. Shivener was also the best vocalist of the cast, though the script had her playing the damsel in distress so much that her scenes served to slow the play’s momentum by the second act.
Such stereotypes marred what could have been a near-perfect production, because they were so blatant at times that they threatened to make characters one-dimensional. As Carl, Sam’s sleazy friend and coworker, Mike Backes did an admirable job of trying to show sincere empathy over Sam’s death, but the script simply doesn’t provide enough latitude to make it believable. And just in case you were in doubt that he was a money-hungry lowlife, he had greasy hair and a leather jacket to bring the point home. Ditto (pun intended) for thug Willie Lopez (Ceasar F. Barajas), who sported a pony tail, tattoos and a bandana, because we all know that if you have long hair and tats, you’re a bad guy. Even Sam was given a Superman T-shirt in the opening scene to hammer home his good-guy image with the force of a sledgehammer.
All is rectified, however, when E. Faye Butler took the stage as Oda Mae Brown (played by Whoopi Goldberg in the film), a charlatan who becomes an authentic (if unwilling) psychic when Sam pays her a visit and makes her aid him in his quest. Butler made the role her own and stole the show with a performance that exuded sass and joie de vivre as she sashayed around the stage and delivered lines such as “You relax! You the dead one!” Clearly, she is the glue that holds the production together.
Of course, even the best performance means little without a strong script and score, and this is really the firmament upon which the success of “Ghost the Musical” is built. Bruce Joel Rubin, who wrote the script for the film, wrote the book and lyrics for the play, and the music and lyrics were provided by the musical powerhouses Dave Stewart, one-half of Eurythmics and an award-winning producer, and Glen Ballard, whose songwriting production credits include “Jagged Little Pill” by Alanis Morissette, “Thriller” and “Bad” by Michael Jackson, and “One of the Boys” by Katy Perry.
As with any good musical, the songs provide the structure upon which the entire production lives or dies, and they do not disappoint here. A bit of gospel is injected into the Oda Mae numbers “Are You a Believer” and “I’m Outta Here”; Sam and Molly profess their love for each other (sort of) with “Three Little Words” in a heart-warming yet amusing number that made me think of Meat Loaf’s “Paradise By the Dashboard Light.” The subway ghost who teaches Sam how to move objects does so via a rap song, “Focus.” And “Unchained Melody” is performed three times, including an acoustic number in the first act that serves as a prelude to that titular scene at the pottery wheel set against the Righteous Brothers version playing over the radio.
Kudos are also deserved for the art deco stage design, which added to the play’s intimate feel while allowing for quick changes, and for the lighting, which showcased the musical’s themes of good (white light) vs. evil (red) during pivotal moments – and elicited a fair amount of “oohs” and “ahhs” when characters were dragged down to hell.
In all, “Ghost the Musical” is something that MSMT should be proud of. If it’s any indication of what’s to come, it should be a great season indeed.
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