Gabriel Byrne on stage. In his own words.
By turns hilarious and heartbreaking, Walking with Ghosts is a delightful portrait of the people and landscapes that ultimately shape our destinies. A Landmark production, it comes to Broadway direct from wildly successful runs in London’s West End; Edinburgh, Scotland; and Dublin, Ireland.
As a young boy growing up on the outskirts of Dublin, the stage and screen legend sought refuge in a world of imagination among the fields and hills near his home, at the edge of a rapidly encroaching city. Moving between sensual recollection of childhood in a now almost vanished Ireland and commentary on stardom, the actor-writer returns to Broadway to reflect on a life’s journey.
Adapted from his best-selling memoir of the same name and directed by Emmy Award® winner Lonny Price, Walking with Ghosts is written and performed by Gabriel Byrne (Hereditary, HBO’s In Treatment).
If Mr. Byrne's relatively quiet, raspy voice isn't the ideal instrument to carry a show that runs more than two hours, he's a charming raconteur, recounting his youthful foibles with equal parts wistfulness and dry wit. There are occasions when he tries rather too hard to wax lyrical; recalling an especially idyllic carnival outing, he quips that aiming to prolong the day would have been 'like trying to empty the Irish Sea with a fork.' Not all Irishmen, alas, are poets.
Lonny Price directs Byrne's memoir, and too often the staging is overly glitzy, especially with its many dramatic blackouts that signal we're supposed to be awed by what just took place on stage. Byrne's writing is writerly. He's very conscious of wowing us with his poetic description of a nun's waxy hands or a priest's sour breath or the disappearing coastline of Ireland as he travels to a seminary in Great Britain.
2022 | Broadway |
Broadway Production Broadway |
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