Theatre night:Ghost Quartet.

"There were two sisters who lived by the sea.
Oh, the wind and rain
And the youngest one loved a man in the trees.
Oh, the wind and rain" - The Wind & Rain, Dave Malloy for Ghost Quartet.

Three days into 2020 and the top subject trending on Twitter is World War III (just behind it:- Iran, Soleimani (Qasem, the Iranian general killed this morning in a US air strike) and Franz Ferdinand (not the band). We all know Twitter, and social media in general, likes to exaggerate threats and dangers wherever possible, acts as an amplifier for already horrible things, and creates binary divisions where once there was nuance but, even with that in mind, this is a predictably shitty start to the year.

It's not like the arbitrary change of dates was ever going to change the mindsets of the nationalists, populists, and religious fundamentalists that hold so much sway in the world right now but, ffs, let us at least get halfway through our first full week of work.

With this in mind, I was glad that my first night out of the year and my first theatrical experience of 2020 was of an escapist nature. There's going to be more than enough reality very soon and I'm feeling run down as it is (month long cold combined, most likely, with general festive unhealthiness has left me feeling each and every year of my age) so what I needed was something to make me smile and with Dave Malloy's Ghost Quartet at The Boulevard Theatre in Soho I was not to be disappointed.

Its billing as "an intoxicating musical about love, loss and spirits" was absolutely right. Performed in the round by four nattily dressed actors, singer and musicians it told a circular, and circuitous story, of a family torn apart by an infant's death, a thwarted love affair, a fatal crash in a tube station, and alcoholic dependence.

None of which sounds much fun, admittedly. But in the capable hands of Carly Bawden, Niccolo Curradi, Maimuna Memon, and Zubin Varla (under the direction of Bill Buckhurst), the music, lyrics, and story that Dave Malloy created was brought beautifully to magical realist life in the form of a double album. With a running length of ninety minutes it was the sort of album you'd buy in, or from, the seventies. One with a gatefold sleeve.

As with many of those progtastic albums, the sheer length ran the risk of venturing into periods of boredom but with the songs veering from woozy Tom Waits style bar room philosophising ("Bad Men") to Disneyesque musical numbers ("Starchild") and from ramalama bangers ("The Camera Shop") to songs dedicated to Thelonious Monk things were never allowed to stay the same for long and drifts of concentration were skillfully averted.

The Wikipedia page on Ghost Quartet claims influences from even farther afield. Japanese Noh theatre, Arabian Nights, David Bowie, James Joyce, The Twilight Zone, Stanley Kubrick, Stephen Sondheim, Stephen King, Edgar Allan Poe, Frozen, Neil Gaiman, and Carl Sagan. One thing you can say for sure is that Ghost Quartet was not lacking in ambition.

If it didn't quite manage to pull all these disparate influences into as powerful a narrative as I'd have hoped that was more than adequately compensated for by the sheer glee of the performance and the technical proficiency, both vocally and musically,  of all four performers. Whether playing a melodica, an erhu, a dulcimer, a harp, a cello, or the more traditional piano, guitar, and keyboard the sound they made was both haunting and many of the songs instantly catchy.

It's not long before we're clapping along like we're in one of those dreadful An Audience With programmes on ITV and further crowd participation only adds to the gaiety. Shakers are distributed to some previously unsuspecting percussionists and whiskey and bourbon passed out to those in the front row. It didn't reach me which is just as well as (a) I don't get on with the hard stuff and (b) I'm trying to be good at the moment - but it was a lovely gesture all the same. Extending the New Year's Eve party deep into the 2nd of January!

At one point, members of the audience were invited on stage to play the instruments and, while sometimes this can be a bit cringe inducing, it was all done in such a tasteful and understated way it had me beaming with joy. The few spaces on the stage (it was just a floor really) not given over to various musical instruments were covered in dusty old piles of books, a mountain of retro style suitcases in which our performers would ascend to sing, proper old globes, and an aesthetically pleasing golden, and occasionally rotating, telescope.

I must confess I was so distracted by the songs and telescope that I did not follow the story so well. But it wasn't an easy one to track in the first place. Characters shifting from lovers to family members and from daughters to mothers was discombobulating enough but "four interwoven narratives spanning seven centuries" was never going to be an easy follow.

Throw in an evil bear, the ghost of Thelonious Monk (who seemed to be living behind a large and highly resonant gong), and Scheherazade from One Thousand and Nights and things started to get really intricate. They became a little clearer as the story developed but still peculiar tales of fiddles fashioned from breastbones of great aunts, imaginary friends, and ghosts beckoning children to come and join them on the other side add further layers of mystery and mystique to the whole baroque concoction.

With repeated viewings one imagines it's likely that the story will make more sense and that further depth will be revealed but, thrown in at the deep end as I was, I felt it best just to hold on tight and enjoy the ride. If, often, I was unsure what was going on it didn't matter all that much. It wouldn't be long before another great song like The Astronomer, Any Kind of Dead Person, or Subway would come along and as the vast majority of the story was told in song it never felt forced.

By the end I was rapt by the skills of the performers. Varla, in his flat cap and crumpled just to the right degree suit, had me spellbound as he stood behind his piano like a barrelhouse professor, the vest wearing Curradi's hirsute features made his forays into the realms of the ursine as believable as his erhu playing was infectious, Bawden's dulcimer playing was eclipsed only by her powerful voice, and Memon acted as her perfect foil. Bawden in a beautiful black dress and Memon bequiffed and decked out in a fifties style trouser suit. These are people that looked as good as they sounded.

It all added up to a much needed, and thoroughly enjoyable and atmospheric, ninety minutes of music and storytelling and, as I walked home through the surprisingly mild London air, I reflected on my belief that as long as more of us choose to come together to tell stories, sing songs, and (if you must) drink whiskey together than want to start wars, waste their lives 'shouting' at strangers on Twitter, and, essentially, try to take control over other's lives we're probably not as close to World War III as the naysayers like to make us think we are. I really fucking hope so.