‘Tis the season for spirited tales, and Murphys Creek Theatre delivers in spades, or maybe axes.
Playing Fridays and Saturdays at 7:30 p.m. and Sundays at 2 p.m. through Oct. 25, “spirit/song,” the 2025 winner of the Murphys Creek Theatre (MCT) “Quill to Act New Play Festival,” is by Washington State-based playwright David Bareford. It’s an intriguingly entertaining and very well-produced piece that also gives Mother Lode theatre lovers who take the opportunity to see first boasting rights for doing so. Bareford, a theatre transplant from Chicago to Washington and a resident playwright at Love Street Playhouse in Woodland, described “spirit/song” as a ghost story mystery that is also a meditation on grief; built on the belief that some souls find each other across every lifetime, and that love, even when it cannot save us, can teach us how to let go. He has authored other plays as well as theatre design and choreography instruction books.
Eight colorfully memorable characters, played by a tremendously capable, six-person ensemble on a stage set that feels like the haunted lighthouse it is intended to be, transport the audience back and forth in time between 1875 and the present day while telling an entwined tale involving both a grief-stricken, recently widowed best-selling mystery author with writer’s block and a lightkeeper’s wife whose faithless husband has been romantically ensnared by her supposed best friend.
As the play opens, author Ajay Kapoor has been taken by his publisher, Evelyn, to the quite rustic, remote lighthouse-turned-vacation-rental, located in the fictional coastal town of Brewster’s Bay, Washington, for a month-long writer’s retreat intended for him to deliver a promised but now overdue novel he owes her under contract. Still reeling from the loss of his Grammy-winning musician wife, Diya, in a vehicle crash some months ago, he takes one look at the do-frills, distinctly uncozy interior and while ready to bolt is cajoled to stay and fulfill his obligation. Instead of finding solitude, he has a run-in with the spirit of Nora Sinclair, who died there in 1875 while living with lightkeeper Tobias Sinclair. The two can see each other even though no one else in their respective times can.
The two discover they not only share the same physical space across time. There is also evidence of a spirit connection tied to a poem written by Nora in her journal and a chart-topping song whose lyrics are the same as the lyrics that his wife Diya penned nearly a century and a half later. As Ajay and Nora share details of their lives, details from her own tragic life begin to emerge; revealing an illicit love affair turned traitorous plot. Braeden Harris, previously seen in MCT’s “The Glass Menagerie” and “Insertion,” turns in a strong emotional performance as Ajay that is well-complemented by strikingly compelling New York City-based actor Gillian Mackay Brown in her MCT debut.
The other three cast members double up to each play two characters: one from 1875 and the other in current day, which reinforces the concept of Samsara that includes reincarnation and that the true inner self is eternal and unchanging. Sophie Falvey, who earlier this year played multiple characters in MCT’s “Henry V,” colorfully embodies both Nora’s two-faced bestie Hedy and modern-day librarian-sleuth Sophia. Dan Fitz, last seen on the MCT stage in last year’s production of “True West,” portrays Nora’s wickedly self-absorbed, self-righteous husband Tobias and current lighthouse owner Ferguson. Local performance artist Holly Heath aptly embodies the roles of Ajay’s concerned publisher-friend Evelyn and a witchy spirit medium Mrs. Phineas, whose lighthouse visit fuels a plan to disgrace and do in Nora while making it seem that she lost her mind.
The show runs about two hours and 15 minutes with intermission. According to MCT Artistic Director Todd Thomas, who is also the director of the production, it is intended for audiences ages 13-plus with content that explores grief, pregnancy loss, and suicide; and includes staged violence involving a firearm and an axe along with loud gunshots and occasional strong language. Tickets are pay-what-you-can, pay-it-forward. MCT is located at 580 S. Algiers St. in Murphys. For more details and tickets visit murphyscreektheatre.org.
