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).
The transition from page to stage feels undermotivated, incomplete. The lively language shifts easily enough from prose to monologue, and Byrne - with his wide, serious face, his bright, worried eyes, his voice like the growl of a polite bear - is compulsively watchable. What the show lacks (and this is true of the memoir, as well) is a sense of why he's examining his life now. In public. Why would a man lay himself bare like this, on Broadway? It's hard to discern because the show all but ignores the latter part of his life and acting career.
It's a testament to the second act of Walking with Ghosts, Gabriel Byrne's new one-man show at the Music Box Theatre, that its bouncy levity and charismatic performance managed to erase the rabid hatred I'd developed during its first. The notes I wrote during that opening half could be hardly be shown on a men's room stall in the actor's native Dublin, so enraged was I at being made to sit through a series of monologue even James Tyrone (from Byrne's last Broadway outing in 2016's Long Day's Journey Into Night) would deem self-serious and overblown....Then act two begins, and it's as if the lights have been turned on. Byrne is animated, filling up the three gold prosceniums that encase him with a sense of fun and purpose. Now giving an actual performance, he shines in relating tales of his early career on the UK stage, and the ups and downs of success. The first of these, which gives him the chance to prove his comedy skills by imitating the many ways actors deliver their bows, is a delight. When you have salient issues to get off your chest, like the tenderness your father had for you, or a legendary Richard Burton drinking story which led to your eventual sobriety, why bother with a dreary lead-up?
2022 | Broadway |
Broadway Production Broadway |
Videos