Do you remember where you were when:
1. JFK was shot?
2. Man first walked on the moon?
3. Princess Diana died?
4. George Moscone was assassinated?
For me, the answer to the first three questions is vividly yes. The answer to Number 4 is remembrance by association. I was at work in the main newsroom of a New Orleans newspaper in 1978 when an editor yelled out, "Harvey Milk is dead." While news of Mayor Moscone's concurrent death must have arrived soon after, I don't have those words to replay in my head. It's a variation on experiences that the new play Ghost Light recognizes as typical, a recognition that wavers among sorrow, resignation, and anger.
What I do have in vivid memories came later on the evening news, with the shaky video of Dianne Feinstein on the City Hall steps announcing the deaths of Moscone and Milk to gasps, shrieks, and a clearly exclaimed "Jesus Christ." That video shows up almost as soon as Ghost Light begins, as a kid's reverie in front of the television is interrupted by a news bulletin leading with the videotape of Feinstein's announcement. And again we gasp.
The boy is 14-year-old Jon Moscone, son of Mayor George Moscone, who grows up to be a theater director. He is not to be overtly confused with Jonathan Moscone, who was 14 when his father was killed, and grew up to be a theater director. Any resemblance to actual people, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely non-coincidental.
The road to the creation of Ghost Light is so less traveled to the point where its makers must have been laying the macadam as they proceeded. And so Berkeley Artistic Director Tony Taccone mined the memories, emotions, quirks, and tics of Jonathan Moscone, Artistic Director of California Shakespeare Theatre, for a theatrical work that Moscone would direct. It's Moscone's story filtered through playwright Taccone's sensibilities and then brought to stage life by Moscone.
The results are a play of such complexities that parts could come crashing down, and yet they don't. While the play lingers longer than it should, with two endings that could be conflated into one, the results are more than just stageworthy. This is a compelling story that effectively shuttles between 1978 and the present day, and even between reality and fantasy for both the child and adult versions of Jon as the character must finally embrace his larger-than-life father figure before he can mourn and release him.
The set-up for the ultimately restorative breakdown is an appropriately theatrical one. Jon, the grown-up director, can't get on with his planned production of Hamlet because he is obsessing over the scenes featuring the ghost of Hamlet's murdered father. What should the vision look like, and how should Hamlet respond to this unsettling spirit that insists Hamlet seek revenge for his murder?
This need for revenge takes a different form in the adult Jon, for whom no physical revenge upon his father's murderer is possible inasmuch as Dan White took his own life in 1985. Jon's version of bitterness stems from the celebrity martyr Harvey Milk has become for the gay community (and, ironically, Jon is gay) while his father's achievements, including opening city government to gays, lesbians, women, and minorities, have fallen by the wayside in the Milk juggernaut. It boils over when Hollywood comes to San Francisco to tell the tale of Harvey Milk, with the mayor as a walk-on role.
Played by Christopher Liam Moore, who originated the role last year at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival, the adult Jon is a bundle of undirected energy and agitated malaise. Moore provides a sharp sense of a real person who doesn't always deal smoothly with issues big and small. In addition to his theatrical block, which provides reason for clever repartee with his assistant (a snappy and sympathetic Robynn Rodriguez), Jon is also fretting over plans to actually meet his online sweetie whose handle is Loverboy (a fetching Danforth Comins in fantasy mode, and Ted Deasy in the flesh). And then there are Jon's horrific nightmares in which he is visited by an armed, goading, homophobic prison guard (the effectively threatening Bill Geisslinger) who looks a lot like his loutish grandfather. Through it all, Jon tries to maintain an apolitical position until he explodes with a rant against just about everything political �" left, right, and in-between.
The intercut flashbacks have more of an ethereal quality, bathed in blue light reflected off Todd Rosenthal's cold-stone set that recreates pieces of City Hall. The 14-year-old Jonathan, confidently played by Tyler James Myers, wanders through a world of therapy sessions, funeral services with empty coffins, and encounters with a mysterious figure (Peter Macon) who tries to point the boy in the right spiritual direction.
Scenes from vintage television comedies flicker at times on the several onstage screens, pulling us out of a dark moment or providing ironic contrast to the terrors of the real world. And one of the most appalling moments in the play comes from one of these sitcom snippets. It's from The Golden Girls, when Bea Arthur's Dorothy sees Betty White's Rose eating a mound of junk food and says, "Next you'll be shooting the mayor of San Francisco."
You don't have to have lived long in San Francisco to realize it marches to a different drummer than the rest of the world. Ghost Light feels like a part of my legacy, even though my arrival came many years after the Milk-Moscone murders and the ugly aftermath. But the play is also working on a universal plane that dates back far further than Hamlet. Ghost Light could be a reasonable choice for regional theaters around the country, but it will always leave its heart in San Francisco.
Ghost Light will run at Berkeley Rep through Feb. 19. Tickets are $14.50-$73. Call (510) 647-2949 or go to www.berkeleyrep.org.