{"id":1899,"date":"2021-03-18T10:43:37","date_gmt":"2021-03-18T17:43:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/shhhinsidevoice.com\/?p=1899"},"modified":"2021-03-23T15:23:32","modified_gmt":"2021-03-23T22:23:32","slug":"what-sets-ghost-quartet-apart-from-other-musicals","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/shhhinsidevoice.com\/?p=1899","title":{"rendered":"What Sets Ghost Quartet Apart From Other Musicals?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

When you hear the words musical theatre, what is the first thing to come to mind? For most, it is a fun, upbeat story, set to music, like West Side Story<\/em> or Grease<\/em>. Well, in 2014, David Malloy took everyone\u2019s ideas of what a musical is and flipped it on it\u2019s head with his original musical Ghost Quartet.<\/em> With inspiration taken from stories as old as Arabian Nights<\/em> and as new as Frozen<\/em>, Ghost Quartet<\/em>, \u201ca song cycle about love, death, and whiskey,\u201d takes these beloved stories on with a brand new approach. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

To fully approach this article, I had to first think about what the definition of what a musical really is. According to the Oxford Dictionary, a musical is \u201ca play or movie in which singing and dancing play an essential part.\u201d Obviously, just looking at this definition, Ghost Quartet <\/em>follows those basic guidelines. In fact there\u2019s a total of five speaking scenes out of about 23 scenes altogether. But the true meaning of a musical goes far beyond dictionary definition. According to my research, the top six most famous Broadway musicals seem to be Chicago, Mamma Mia!, The Phantom of the Opera, Wicked, Hamilton, <\/em>and The Lion King. <\/em>What do all of these shows have in common, aside from being wildly successful? I can come up with a few things, although there will likely be an outlier for each category. Overally, these musicals have at least one of these aspects: fun music, fun costumes, and amazing choreography. Let\u2019s look at Ghost Quartet<\/em> under these contexts. While there are a few super fun songs on the album, such as \u201cFour Friends\u201d or \u201cAny Kind of Dead Person,\u201d most of it is not music you would listen to in your spare time, unless you enjoy listening to pure chaos, and in certain cases, literal screaming (As the script puts it, \u201cghost scream terror\u201d). And then there\u2019s the costumes and choreography aspect. As far as choreography goes, the actors are mostly stuck at their designated areas because they play every instrument in the show. The scene changes, the singing, and the music is all done by the four of them. We can see a few examples of this in bigger Broadway shows, for example in Anais Mitchell\u2019s Hadestown, <\/em>in which one of the fates plays the accordion, another the fiddle, and of course Orpheus plays the guitar, but I\u2019ve never seen it to this extent. The only one I can think of that even comes close would be Lizard Boy<\/em>, another small, off-broadway production, in which there are three actors who play all the instruments and do all the scene changes, but the instrumentals for their music is a lot more simple, consisting usually of one instrument, like guitar or ukulele, or, in one song, kazoo. But Ghost Quartet <\/em>takes this to a new level, with what sounds like a full orchestra, and yet is played by four people. Each person plays about eight different instruments, and the effect is amazing. Meanwhile, every new production of this show has complete creative freedom to totally recreate the world it takes place in, or choose from one of the many worlds that exist in the show to be the basis for props and costumes and scenery. In the original show, although perhaps there was some coordination with the color of their outfits (Rose Red wearing a red skirt and Pearl White wearing a white dress), mostly their outfits were decently plain. However I have seen productions done with full steampunk getup and others with fairy-tale style outfits. As far as choreography goes, it\u2019s pretty similar. The way the original cast did it, playing all the instruments, made it so that they couldn\u2019t move around much, only occasionally to come to the center of the room and have some partner dances. Aside from that, the acting is stuck to facial and body expressions.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Another thing that really sets Ghost Quartet<\/em> apart from other shows is the order in which the story is told. Ghost Quartet <\/em>has about six simultaneous storylines. In one storyline, the main character, Rose Red, goes off and time-travels and decides to mess everything up for everyone. It is mentioned that all the characters she takes things from are the same people, some of which are her, throughout many lifetimes. Each storyline takes a closer look into the lives of the people in that lifetime, and in every lifetime, the same major event happens. Because this story wants to give you a solid backstory on everyone before they get to the real climax of each story, it is all completely out of order. The only indication as to which lifetime you\u2019re in is how the characters interact with each other. This can be problematic for those who just want to enjoy a night at the theatre and not think about the show after it\u2019s done. But I personally love analyzing things, so it was great for me. As soon as I finished watching it the first time, I looked up the lyrics to all the songs and tried to piece together a solid storyline. And honestly, I\u2019ve been analyzing this show for about a year now, and I\u2019m still learning new things about it. For example, in the song \u201cThe Photograph,\u201d I didn\u2019t realize that it was taking place in one of the main storylines, the one inspired by the 1001 Nights, <\/em>and Sheherezade is telling the story of what happened in another lifetime. It\u2019s hard to infer this because this scene is performed in complete darkness; however there, is a clue as to where this song takes place in the prior song, \u201cLights Out,\u201d which ends with the character Roxy asking her mom to tell her a story, and her mom asks if she\u2019d like to hear a story from Arabian Nights. <\/em>There\u2019s little things like this littered throughout the entire show, like when the character Rose Red is writing poems about the stars: Each different star represents a character in the show, and it\u2019s very impressive how many of these small things they\u2019ve hidden.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

To fully understand this show, it\u2019s helpful to look at all the inspirations. For example, there is one storyline based off of a book by Edgar Allen Poe, The Fall of the House of Usher<\/em>, and when I read it after watching the show, pretty much every new line of text I was thinking, \u201chey, I recognize that.\u201d\u00a0 The opening line of Poe\u2019s work is \u201cDuring the whole of a dull, dark, and soundless day, in the autumn of the year,\u201d and the opening line of the usher storyline goes \u201cOn a dull, dark, and soundless day, in the autumn of 1873.\u201d The reason I\u2019m mentioning this inspiration in particular is because this one truly highlights how well this show takes inspiration from these things and is so totally similar to them and yet changes them just enough to fit into the Ghost Quartet <\/em>storyline. Another great example would be the \u201cSubway\u201d storyline. It is inspired by one picture, R. Umar Abbasi\u2019s 2012 New York Post<\/em> cover photo of a man who has been pushed onto a subway track and is about to get hit by a train. Dave Malloy saw this picture and decided to write a story about everyone involved in that image, including the driver, the victim, and of course, the photographer, resulting in one of the most hauntingly beautiful songs in the show, \u201cHero,\u201d in which the photographer sings about her regrets and questions humanity\u2019s need to be heroes, not so that they can help people, but so that they can be loved. The song “Hero” connects all the storylines in which the photographer, Rose Red in another life, reminisces on why she killed her sister, trying to take some of the blame off of herself and put it on the astronomer, who \u201cdrove a train through her heart.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I could go on forever about all the things that set this musical apart in such a way that elevates it to one of my favorite musicals ever. Overall, Ghost Quartet<\/em> takes a new approach to everyone\u2019s ideas of what a musical should be and is criminally underrated. I would highly recommend everyone who reads this go watch it immediately. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Sources:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

https:\/\/poestories.com\/read\/houseofusher<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

https:\/\/slate.com\/culture\/2012\/12\/ny-post-subway-death-photo-of-ki-suk-han-why-r-umar-abbasis-image-disturbs-us.html<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\nhttps:\/\/www.cheatsheet.com\/culture\/the-15-most-popular-broadway-musicals-of-all-time.html\/\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

https:\/\/www.ranker.com\/list\/the-most-popular-broadway-musicals-ever\/constance-bennet<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

https:\/\/www.newyorktheatreguide.com\/news-features\/top-10-broadway-musicals<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

https:\/\/www.southbendtribune.com\/entertainment\/inthebend\/arts\/art-offers-a-mysterious-blend-of-music-drama-in-ghost\/article_08512d09-009f-5fb8-85c2-1e1f91bd1a42.html?utm_medium=social&utm_source=facebook_South_Bend_Tribune<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

http:\/\/davemalloy.com\/ghost.html<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

When you hear the words musical theatre, what is the first thing to come to mind? For most, it is a fun, upbeat story, set to music, like West Side Story or Grease. Well, in 2014, David Malloy took everyone\u2019s ideas of what a musical is and flipped it on it\u2019s head with his original […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":35,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1899","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/shhhinsidevoice.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1899","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/shhhinsidevoice.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/shhhinsidevoice.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shhhinsidevoice.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/35"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shhhinsidevoice.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1899"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/shhhinsidevoice.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1899\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1960,"href":"https:\/\/shhhinsidevoice.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1899\/revisions\/1960"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/shhhinsidevoice.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1899"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shhhinsidevoice.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1899"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shhhinsidevoice.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1899"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}