The complex relationship between a writer and their subject sits at the heart of Ross Mueller’s play The Ghost Writer, which opened at Marrickville’s cosy Flight Path Theatre last week. Written in 2007, the play tells the story of ghostwriter Claudia (Mel Day) as she attempts to understand her latest subject, Brihanna (Emma Dalton), a grieving mother who wants her daughter’s killer exposed in a best-selling book.
Despite its overwrought premise, director Jane Angharad manages to bring out the play’s more subtle themes through the intimacy she develops between the characters and the audience. This was especially true for Brihanna’s character, whose extended monologues powerfully captured the complexities of grief. Dalton’s performance was mesmerising, leading the audience effortlessly between Brihanna’s quiet vulnerability and her all-consuming rage. The skilled delivery of these monologues was matched by clever chiaroscuro lighting, drawing the audience further into the character’s shifting mindscape.
The recurring use of a waterfall between the audience and the stage was another clever piece of stage design. Accompanied by sounds of thunder, the waterfall was not only used as an element of pathetic fallacy to heighten the ominous events of the play, but also served to separate the emotional scenes shared by Claudia and Brihanna, and the more light-hearted scenes involving Claudia and her father Robert (Mark Langham).
These father-daughter scenes felt authentic, thanks to Mueller’s energetic dialogue which gave the play the momentum it needed. Robert is a literary agent who symbolises the nefarious underbelly of the publishing industry. While Claudia is the ideal figure of the writer in her quest to “give a voice to the truth,” Robert is prepared to exploit Brihanna’s grief for commercial gain. While Robert’s old-school pub humour did provide a few easy laughs, the constant switch to this more comedic tone was at times disorientating.
Claudia’s character is a somewhat cliché rendition of the struggling writer. She is mysterious, detached, and wanders the city on rainy nights looking for inspiration. Claudia’s detachment from the world around her is highlighted in her unconventional relationship with West (Shan-Ree Tan), who doesn’t even know Claudia’s name despite having dated her for six months.
West just so happens to be a part of the prosecution team who convicted an innocent man for the murder of Brihanna’s daughter. Although Tan embodies West’s guilty conscience in a convincing manner, his long-winded rants on police corruption and the failings of the justice system begin to drag the play’s initial whodunnit pace. By the time Brihanna reveals her daughter’s true killer to Claudia at the end of the play, the audience’s curiosity has dwindled, and the scene feels anti-climactic.
However, despite the play’s pacing issues, its exploration of the ethical grey zones that writers must navigate when turning life into literature is fascinating. Giving a voice to the voiceless is a difficult task, and for Claudia, it ultimately proves too big a responsibility to bear.
The Ghost Writer is showing at Flight Path Theatre, Marrickville, until March 16, 2024.
