Oberon Horror Story :: Dave Malloy Talks 'Ghost Quartet'

Eclectic is the best way to describe Dave Malloy, the award-winning composer/lyricist/arranger/performer who brings his theater piece "Ghost Quartet" to Oberon this Wednesday through Sunday for five performances.

In reviewing the piece when it opened last year, New York Times theater critic Ben Brantley put it this way: "The voguish term 'mash-up' doesn't begin to capture its breadth or its quirky sincerity. Performed by four singer-musicians (including Mr. Malloy, at the piano), 'Ghost Quartet' uses languages as varied as gospel, folk ballads, honky-tonk anthems of heartbreak, electropop, doo-wop and jazz � la Thelonious Monk."

Not only does Malloy employ a wide variety of musical styles, but the piece incorporates supernatural stories from many sources: ribbed from numerous sources: Japanese Noh dramas, Poe's "The Fall of the House of Usher," "The Arabian Nights," the Brothers Grimm, urban legends, even the film "Frozen" and a horrific image seen on the front page of the New York Post.

All of this developed from a thought he had while playing a game of Risk with friends (and favorite musicians Brent Arnold, Brittain Ashford, Gelsey Bell who join him in the show). "The four of us have been friends for six or seven years," Malloy explained last week from his Brooklyn home. "We were sitting around the house playing Risk one night and I was in one of those creator modes wondering what my next show was going to be. And I looked around and thought, why not a show for these guys? These are my favorite musicians in New York. And we got a space at Bushwick that's an amazing theater that's creepy and haunting looking."

For Malloy, how a piece develops has much to do with the location in which it is being performed. The Lincoln Center performance space where his recent "Preludes" (which dealt with Sergei Rachmaninoff when he experienced a crippling creative block) premiered was a major factor to its more formal presentation. Similarly the supernaturally-inspired "Ghost Quartet" was conceived for a spooky loft at Brooklyn's Bushwick Starr performance venue. (That production and the one coming up at Oberon is directed by Annie Tippe, with Christopher Bowser as the production designer and James Harrison Monaco the dramaturg.)

"I love knowing where the piece is going to be so I can write for the space. This piece was written to be performed in a kooky, spooky loft with a lot of whiskey being passed around."

Whiskey is also integral to the piece as bottles of bourbon are found on the tables and are passed around the space. "We talk a lot about whiskey in the show. Whiskey makes an appearance in all the ghost stories that we are telling, so there's a lot of drinking in this production."

In the past Malloy has expressed his belief in Bertolt Brecht's credo that theater without beer is a museum. "I think some shows require alcohol," Malloy explains. "I am as the creator most excited by these shows that are more a communal event -- more a bonding between the performers and the audience. And passing out liquor really helps that. It helps with that social lubrication and makes everyone feel connected."

Why he chose ghost stories as a subject goes back to his childhood. "It began when I was kid and was obsessed with science fiction and fantasy fiction and television. Stephen King, Ray Bradbury, "The Twilight Zone," "Alfred Hitchcock Presents." It's not just ghost stories for me -- it's the whole world of the paranormal and fantasy and science fiction with ghost stories being the center piece of it. And then the other thing is the moral/spiritual/religious questions these stories ask is something I am fascinated with."

Those more weightier elements stem from Malloy's later interests in literature. "A real part of it was that I was double major in�music�and English literature, so I've always had a real love of the classics and classic literature. This piece definitely draws on a huge range of sources -- 'The Arabian Nights' is a key source of inspiration, and then, again, Stephen King, even James Joyce's 'Ulysses.' We have a list in the program of all the references in the show and it's a pretty broad cross-section of sources."

He even cites a current pop culture meme. "'American Horror Story' was another influence in this piece. I love how it is a post-modern show in that they take every thing, every single trope and cliche of the genre and mash them altogether in unexpected ways."

Mashing things up aptly describes Malloy's musical style, which is influenced by a wide variety of sources: classical, pop, jazz, musical theater, EDM, world music. "I think it comes from the way I was brought up listening to lots of different kinds of music. I started with indie rock, then in high school I became a jazz snob, then in college I was a classical music snob. When I moved to San Francisco it became electronic music. I've gone to many phases in my life and integrated them into my music. Now when I listen to music I just put it on shuffle and I'm jumping around from Rock to Reggae to Raga to classical."

Another influence on "Ghost Quartet" are concept rock albums from the 1970s -- titles like Pink Floyd's "The Wall" and David Bowie's "The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars." Malloy informs the audience that they are in a way watching a performance of a concept album by having the cast announce the sections as if they were referencing sides to a two-record set.

"That came about because when I was writing the show it was for these other musicians. All four of us are musicians first -- we don't identify as theatrical actors. So we wanted to make a piece in which music was in the forefront. There are some moments of acting, but it is really a music piece, first and foremost. So in an early workshop we talked about the structure of those '70s concept albums -- Pink Floyd's 'The Wall' and David Bowie's 'Ziggy Stardust' and the way those pieces dealt with narrative and how they played with narrative. They tell stories without being too explicit about the linear logic of it. That there are gaps in the logic and gaps in the narrative, and sometimes it's just setting up a mood that's more important than the audience. So I think using the concept album idea helps the audience understand how to hear the piece. I want people to see it as pieces of music with theatrical trappings and lets the audience experience it in a looser kind of way."

Another integral part of "Ghost Quartet" was that aforementioned photo on the front page of the New York Post on December 4, 2012.

"When we first started writing the show we were talking about actual ghost stories that we knew. Modern day ghost stories. There's a really, really striking cover photo on the New York Post about two years ago I think in which this photographer just happened to be on a subway platform right when someone pushed someone else into into the front of an upcoming train. So there's a terrifying photograph of this man trying to climb out of the subway tracks with this train bearing down on him. And sure enough, he was killed second later. The New York Post splashed on its front page with headline that read 'Doomed.' There were a lot of questions as to whether this was in poor taste or not, but the power of the photograph is incredible. It is a terrifying photograph and you can kind-of see a ghost in the photograph,the ghost is person that's just about to die. And for us it raised questions about the photographer himself -- what is it this person thinking in this moment that leads him to take a picture at that moment. So that photograph and the photographer take an essential role in the show."

Does Malloy think the piece is scary?

"Some people find it scary," Malloy says. "But we aren't on a haunted house-like trip or anything like that. We kind of rely on the imagination to do the scaring for us. We do have a section in the dark because we didn't want to spend money on a set so we decided to turn off all the lights and let the audience scare itself.�It's definitely more a psychological mood piece than a shock/gore kind of thing. Don't expect Freddie Krueger or anything like that."

Malloy is a triple-threat amongst the new generation of musical theater writers. He not only writes the music and lyrics, but orchestrates and performs them as well. He is one of the four-member ensemble of "Ghost Quartet." Boston audiences may remember Malloy from his appearance in "Three Pianos," another inventive work that used Schubert's song cycle "Winterreise" to look at the composer's life through a contemporary prism. It played the American Repertory Theater in December 2011 and January 2012.

Malloy, a bearish ginger in his 30s, is on something of a roll. He recently concluded a 2-month run at Lincoln Center of "Preludes," an examination of a period in composer Sergei Rachmaninoff's life when he experienced a crippling creative block, which was most favorably compared to Sondheim's "Sunday in the Park with George." Immediately upon that show's opening, Malloy was off to Berkeley California where his teen-themed musical "Don't Stop Me" had its premiere. He followed that in July with two productions of "Ghost Quartet" in upstate New York and California. Then in December he returns to the Loeb mainstage for the first U.S. production outside of New York of his acclaimed off-Broadway hit "Natasha, Pierre & The Great Comet of 1812," which is described as "an electropop opera based on Book Eight of Tolstoy's "War & Peace" and won a slew of awards and "Best Of" citations when it played in various locations in New York in 2012 and 2014.

Part of the challenge of bringing "Natasha, Pierre & The Great Comet of 1812" to the Loeb is how can he transform the piece, initially performed in an environmental setting that suggested a Russian dinner club, to a more conventional, proscenium-styled space. "We're thrilled. We're excited to do it. We've been talking about for a long time how this piece would work in larger theaters. So this will be an interesting hybrid model of the linking that original seating arrangement, which will be on the stage. In addition to that we are extending it into the larger auditorium in other ways to make it immersive."

There may not be as much food served as in its New York productions, Malloy observes, but expect plenty of vodka. "It's going to be an integral part of it to be sure."

Ghost Quartet runs September 9 through September 12 at Oberon, 2 Arrow Street, Cambridge, MA. For more information visit the American Repertory Theater website.

Photos from the production of "Ghost Quartet" are by Ryan Jensen.

Watch "Any Kind of Dead Person" from "Ghost Quartet":