Walking with Ghosts - Apollo Theatre

There was a piece about this on Radio 4 Today this morning.

The Music Box isn't all that big, to be fair, but I can't imagine this selling here in NYC. He's beloved, but isn't that big a draw in the NY theatre community. 

I saw this in Dublin last January. Looking back now, I recall it as an entertaining afternoon spent with an engagaing storyteller, who was open and vunrable (visibly upset at one point), and had plenty of dry humour.



Not much to spoil , but just incase:







Of course much of this may have changed in the intervening time.

Enjoyed this a lot. Late start plus 2 minutes silence meant it was after 10 when we got out. Website said 2h.30, signs inside had it at 55, 20, 55 but time went longer somewhere.

It is much as lookingatthestars describes above, Byrne is very engaging and tells his story really well. Funny throughout and does not shy away from the lows one bit. Moving in many places. Very warm reception for it this evening.

When I saw this, the audience, including myself (and DaveB, I think), were still reeling at the news of the Queen passing away an hour earlier, and we began with a two minute silent remembrance of her, so in that sense we were walking with Ghosts before Gabriel Byrne ever came on.

The ghosts Byrne was walking with were principally those of his family (his father, his mother, his sister) but also the ghost of himself, who he once was as a boy (before the interval) and a young man (after the interval).

Byrne is an incredibly vivid, immediate and lyrical writer, so the evening is always intriguing and moving, albeit not always convincing in the first half, where he could not possibly remember so much detail this accurately. Byrne gives us a wink, that he is filling in blanks of his own memory, when his memory morphs into the lyrics of "Qué Sera Sera" lol.

Some spoilers follow. . .

I found the second half, which dealt with Byrne's adult experiences as a terrible plumber, his early work in theatre, his relations with his mentally ill sister and his meeting with Richard Burton, more gripping than the first half, for being more vivid and believable accounts of his real experiences, less embroidered.

That said, I believed every word in the first half about his granny and and cornflakes and trips to the movies and also about his experience with a horrible old priest.

I think the Burton story is included partly to explain why he doesn't talk about his Hollywood life, about his work in great films like "The Usual Suspects" and "Miller's Crossing" (I'd have loved to hear about his working with Albert Finney, for instance, that movie being mostly about a bromance between the two men): essentially, Burton explains, fame is total crap, and it's a very funny truthful story.

Anyhow, this is a wonderful show. We all have our ghosts, and we are all becoming ghosts, and Byrne talks us through his ghosts generously, lyrically and movingly.

RIP, your Majesty. RIP, Gabriel Byrne's ghosts.

4 stars from me.