A 12-year-old boy (Wyatt Cirbus, center) encounters ghosts (played by Alex Boniello, left, and Molly Hager) upon moving into his family’s lighthouse.
After all those months with no live performance, it’s heartening not only to have theaters back up and running but also to see companies picking up right where they left off. Like the Civilians, who are finally getting to mount the New York premiere of Whisper House. The show had been set to begin performances of the Duncan Sheik/Kyle Jarrow musical on the very day in March 2020 when all theater was shut down.
Now, two years into a devastating pandemic, Whisper House lyrics like “Love while you’re alive / Take it from the ones who know: None of us survive ... So keep me close and hold me tight / We will make it through the night” have a new resonance. But even with its timely message of perseverance and the chance, at long last, to see this work by Tony-winning Spring Awakening creator Sheik (which was first produced in 2010 at San Diego’s Old Globe), the show ultimately feels underwhelming, telling an emotional story with music that never really crescendos in emotion or music.
The sheriff (Jeb Brown, left) shares some local lore with Christopher (Cirbus).
That flatness is especially surprising coming from the adventurous Civilians, who are best known for their “investigative” docu-theater productions that have tackled such topics as global warming and the porn industry. They succeed in conveying an eerie ambience for this play, set in a haunted Maine lighthouse inhabited by people dealing with death, disability, loneliness and prejudice, but the tone doesn’t change much even as secrets are uncovered and reconciliations achieved.
With lighting and sound effects to simulate a lighthouse’s surroundings, Whisper House begins promisingly. Early goings-on hint at something akin to Beetlejuice–meets–Twin Peaks: As in Beetlejuice, the ghosts on the premises are two people who were in love when they were alive; from Twin Peaks, there’s a remote northern U.S. location, enigmatic characters and some mystery—and mist—in the air (also, the performer who plays the male ghost bears a slight resemblance to young Kyle MacLachlan).
Directed by Civilians founder Steve Cosson, Whisper House is set during World War II. Its ghosts, played by Molly Hager and Alex Boniello, are from the 1920s: They haunt the lighthouse because they were aboard a yacht that sank when the lighthouse’s lamp was off. The two were singers in the onboard band and had planned to declare their love for each other that night—but perished before they could.
Samantha Mathis (right) stars in Whisper House as Lily, owner of a Maine lighthouse; Hager (left) plays one of the ghosts that haunt it. Photographs by Richard Termine.
Their thwarted romance has a parallel among the current residents of the lighthouse, reclusive spinster Lily (Samantha Mathis) and her widowed Japanese handyman, Yasuhiro (James Yaegashi). Yasuhiro is ready to tell Lily how he feels, but he’s been labeled an “enemy alien” amid wartime xenophobia, and the local sheriff (Jeb Brown) is hunting him down. All this transpires just as Lily’s adolescent nephew Christopher (Wyatt Cirbus) comes to live with her. They’d never met before, but the boy has nowhere else to go—his father was killed in the war, and his mother has been committed to a mental hospital.
These somber plotlines and heady ideas play out in relative calm, aside from a few bursts of anger here and there. Not much tension builds because the dialog is blunt and conflicts and suspicions are addressed quickly: Christopher becomes aware of the ghosts on his first night, the sheriff soon after tells him about the shipwreck; Yasuhiro asks Christopher to keep a secret, but moments later the boy spills it to his aunt.
The simplicity of the storytelling in this 90-minute play hems in the actors, as their characters are generally not developed beyond one major trait: Lily, flinty; the sheriff, aggressive; and so on. Still, the cast does fine with what they have—at least fine acting-wise; singing is not a strong suit for either Mathis or Yaegashi. Fortunately, most of the singing is done by Hager and Boniello. Their performances also seem the most lived-in (ironic, perhaps, since they’re playing ghosts).
Sheik and Jarrow’s score sounds pretty similar throughout, except for the more up-tempo “Ballad of Solomon Snell,” a “novelty song” unrelated to the characters or plot. Along with cowriting the lyrics, Jarrow penned the book, and the show’s design team have done an excellent job setting the mood for his story (lighting is by Jorge Arroyo and Jeff Croiter; sound by Ken Travis). Alexander Dodge’s set includes a curved wall and steep staircase, as one would find inside a lighthouse. Whisper House is rich in atmosphere, for sure, but just seems a bit lacking in drama.
Whisper House runs through Feb. 6 at 59E59 Theaters (59 E. 59th St.). Performances are at 7 p.m. Tuesday through Saturday, with matinees at 2 p.m. Saturday and Sunday. Tickets are available by calling (646) 892-7999 or visiting 59e59.org.
