Ghostlight

Grief drips from every line of Ghostlight. It's not that each moment of the script from first-time director Kelly O'Sullivan is inherently tragic. Yet as she steps behind the camera with Alex Thompson, director of South by Southwest 2019 selection Saint Frances (which she both wrote and starred in), she lets the underlying tragedy weep through the surface. That's the only way that Dan (Keith Kupferer) can deal with the catastrophe that has devastated his family, the suicide of his son Brian that's ripped apart his marriage to Sharon (Tara Mallen) and sent teenage daughter Daisy (Katherine Mallen Kupferer) pinwheeling into a rage-fueled self-destructive fury.

But there is also healing, found in Dan's surprise secret life. By accident, this road construction worker, a self-described old school kind of guy who doesn’t do “big feelings,” finds himself cast as Lord Capulet in an amateur theatrical production. If you asked Dan why he was doing this, why he was pushing himself through the greatest drama about teenage suicide ever when his baby boy is buried in the cold, dark soil, there's no way he'd be able to give you anything like an answer.

But that's what makes this ruptured family drama so touching, so cathartic, and ultimately so healing. The ingenious decision to cast the real-life Kupferer Mallen family as the onscreen family gives an astonishing immediacy and intimacy that breaks apart what could have been a tropey, schmaltzy comedy in lesser hands. Instead, it feels combustible and warm in the way family does, especially with an exceptionally volcanic performance from Katherine as Daisy. Equally, Keith is quietly jaw-dropping, catching Dan’s desperate desire to keep all the parts of his life separate – his family, his job, the play, the lawsuit against the woman they hold responsible for his son’s death, and most especially his grief – something that is impossible to sustain. The center cannot hold unless it becomes whole, and his family is that whole.

There’s also a lightness provided by Dolly De Leon (the award-winning star of Triangle of Sadness) as Rita, the only genuinely experienced actor in the troupe. Her evolving relationship with Dan – not sexual nor romantic, but still profound – becomes a vital element of the story and of the healing process.

O’Sullivan’s script is also a remarkable document of community theatre: again, often a place for cheap laughs about hams and backstage romances, but it’s never played for comedy at the character’s expense. There’s a pivotal scene in which director Lanora (an excellently sweet-natured Dworkin) serves as a fill-in intimacy coordinator, working Rita and Dan through a kissing scene. It could be absurd, but instead it’s tender, an insight into who they both are and what they’re going through. It’s also a fascinating counterpart to the real intimacy between Dan and Sharon, summed up in one bedtime line reading that feels like one of the year’s most authentic moments in cinema.

That search for authenticity, for connection, for truth, is what illuminates Ghostlight, with the underlying theme of rehearsal as a mechanism. It’s not just in the theatre, but in Daisy’s therapy sessions, and in the family’s meetings with their lawyer. None of it’s easy, but it’s the forward motion, the catharsis that comes from wanting to be healed. Dan’s lack of self-awareness, his blue-collar inner turmoil is perfectly captured by Keith, and the people around him realize what he’s working through more than he does. There are raw sparks between father and daughter – it’s pretty clear where Daisy gets her explosive temper from – but it’s where so much of Dan’s growth comes from, as he dismantles the pain of his life through the text and vice versa. The final performance, the final healing, is as heartwarming and heartbreaking as anything that has gone before. Amateur dramatics have never been more essential.