'Shining City:' Ghost Story, Triumph of the Human Spirit

Shining City, the celebrated contemporary drama by young Irish playwright Conor McPherson, is now playing its Chicago premiere in a stunning and fascinating production at the Goodman Theatre (www.goodmantheatre.org), the city's largest not-for-profit theater squarely in the heart of the city's Loop theater district.  The production, directed by Goodman Artistic Director Robert Falls and presented in association with Boston's Huntington Theater Company, is as much a triumph of acting as it is of playwriting, especially in the performances of Chicago-based actors Jay Whittaker and John Judd.

While advertised as a "contemporary ghost story" and too-easily summarized as a play about a man who seeks therapy after seeing the ghost of his dead wife, the play has also been described in the media as evoking its author's bout with alcoholism.  Indeed, he landed in a Dublin hospital in 2001, near death.  However, Shining City is in fact a play about the demise of two relationships, and how the men in those relationships relate to, struggle with and try to move on from the women in their complicated lives.

But yes, it is also a very good ghost story.  After seeing Shining City, many viewers of the play will no doubt be on the lookout for a ghost in their own homes, presaged by the sound of a children's ice cream van or its Chicagoland winter equivalent.  Be prepared for a peculiarly theatrical kind of shock, and a strangely reassuring one at that.

The play, on view at the Goodman's 856-seat "Albert" theater only until February 17, runs an intermissionless hour and thirty-five minutes or so.  It was first mounted in Dublin and London, played Broadway two seasons ago in a production directed by Falls, and was nominated for the 2006 Tony Award for Best Play.  Falls has brought his Broadway design team to his Goodman Theatre for this remount, including famed set designer Santo Loquasto, lighting designer Christopher Akerlind (a Tony winner for The Light in the Piazza), costume designer Kaye Voyce (whose costumes brilliantly trace the course of the lead characters' development in the course of the evening) and sound designer Obadiah Eaves (providing a fine aural mood to complement Akerlind's warm lighting).  Mention should also be made of the yeoman's work done here with the first-rate Chicago-based cast by vocal and dialect coach Linda Gates.

In this production, Jay Whittaker plays Ian, a priest turned therapist, a wiry and delicately handsome young man with unresolved issues of religion, sex, money…the list goes on from there.  An accomplished Shakespearean actor, Whittaker plays Ian like a thoroughly modern and pleasantly coiled spring—one sudden move, and there's no telling what this intelligent, sympathetic and empathetic guy could do.  John Judd, an equally accomplished character leading man, is a marvel in his no-holds-barred emotional scenes as the recently bereaved John, evoking memory, horror, guilt, fear and longing, almost all astonishingly created while seated on the therapist's couch.

The play takes place entirely within Ian's office in present-day Dublin.  But the script's structure interestingly alternates between therapeutic scenes which are very nearly pure monologues for John (McPherson began his writing career with monologues and is clearly a master of the genre) and more conventional book scenes centered on Ian.  It should be noted that Whittaker as Ian is never far from the audience's view the entire evening, and must not only perform all of the production's prop changes but must also do his own costume changes—onstage as well.  The other two members of the cast make strong impressions in their single scenes with him:  Keith Gallagher as a young hustler, Laurence, and Nicole Wiesner, especially memorable as the young mother, Neasa.

The play's alternating structure—monologues in which we hear of John's life and see his pain, followed by dialogues in which we see aspects of Ian and are kept at a distance from his pain—gives the production its taut overall rhythm.  But the parallels betwe en the two men, which become more clearly drawn as the show progresses, are what lead us to the show's remarkable climax.  There is clearly a piece missing in one man's story of search, forgiveness and reconciliation, and though we don't see how that story ultimately resolves, we know that it will indeed, somehow, someday, resolve as it must.

And that is the beauty of this production, and of this play.  McPherson's precise and yet lyrical Mamet- and Pinter-influenced writing style, combined with Falls's eye for theatrical images and character progression, join together to produce a evening of exceptionally high quality and deep meaning for any modern audience.  Anyone at any stage of any kind of deep personal relationship will find parallels of both encouragement and caution in this ghost story that is so much more.  Images of terror and the unknown are alternated with those of laughter and growth and desire and achingly real humanity.

The internationally acclaimed Shining City is indeed a beacon of hope and an example of the way to live.  See it before its light is dimmed on the local landscape.  Your life, like those of Ian and John, will be altered by the experience.  Do not miss this haunting and finely honed piece of contemporary theatrical magic.  It is truly exceptional.

Shining City image:  design and direction by Kelly Rickert. Photos of Jay Whittaker, John Judd, Keith Gallagher and Nicole Wiesner by Peter Wynn Thompson

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