One-person shows actually have two jobs. The first is to tell a captivating story. The second is to make a case for why only one person is needed to tell that story. In “Walking with Ghosts,” Gabriel Byrne — an indelible actor of stage and screen — tries his hand at both, to no avail. The play — a theatrical adaptation of Byrne’s 2020 autobiography — takes a familiar approach: one man tracing the arc of his life, layering universal tragedies such as mental illness, alcoholism and abuse with the specific intricacies of an upbringing in mid-twentieth-century Dublin. In doing so, he reveals existential truths about the human condition, the vulnerability of love and the loneliness of fame. What’s never revealed, however, is a unique or functional point of view about it all. Any chance of this production lifting from memoir recitation to illuminating theatrical experience is squashed by Lonny Price’s artless direction and the design team’s unembellished hand. And when a play’s subject is void of any real color, all a spotlight does is wash it out.
Review: In ‘Walking with Ghosts,’ there is little spirit to be found
One-person shows actually have two jobs. The first is to tell a captivating story. The second is to make a case for why only one person is needed to tell that story. In "Walking with Ghosts," Gabriel Byrne — an indelible actor of stage and screen — tries his hand at both, to no avail.
