What a fascinating show.

The cast expertly handles what appears to be a musical theatre behemoth. This show has Matthew Gregg, Lisa Kotelniski, Ashlin Turcotte and Ethan Bindtu-Watt visibly working to the edges of their comfort zones in the best way. I have seen a handful of them in previous works at MacEwan University, and I have to say, this show dances circles around anything I've seen them do. This is a cast of one-of-a-kind talents. To be able to seamlessly transition from being instrumentalists to actors and the inverse is a rare, rare skill. Each person brought an interesting and unique vocal quality that served the score. They each played several characters throughout the show, and they brought new flavours to each one. I especially want to shout out Ethan, the main piano player, for doing what appeared to be a bass drum and two pianos at the same time... and singing/acting all the while- and Ashlin, who spends most of the show strumming away on the autoharp (a welcome sight to folk music lovers such as myself), delivered a haunting and emotionally provocative performance of the song "Hero" had the entire house staring at her in captivity last night. Bravo.

We are sucked into a compelling narrative, the story of Rose and Pearl, and we follow its evolution through centuries of time travel, meeting different iterations of the root characters along the way. 10,000 characters is unfortunately probably not enough to explain the plot- so I am not going to try beyond that. However, I found it to be not terribly difficult to understand, provided you're a quick thinker and know what to look for. It is definitely not a laughter-heavy show (or applause-heavy, for that matter), so you're gonna want to be in the mood for serious if you're planning on coming to see it.

I was pleasantly surprised at the successes in the sound department. Though it still had dips of overbearing instruments or underwhelming voices, there were noticeable improvements in sound quality in contrast to Assassins in this same venue last summer, and they seem to have set themselves on the right path towards fixing it. I imagine the giant brick room is not doing them a service acoustically, though it certainly fits the visual aesthetic of Ghost Quartet. Lighting for this production is also beautifully crafted, serves the show well, and makes the actors look splendid.

If you have time, I strongly recommend this production. My only little gripes were that a few spots in the show felt underrehearsed compared to others, be it with the instruments or lyric retention (which could also just have been some packed-house jitters), and that the sunlight ruins the ghosty atmosphere, so be sure to catch a later show if possible, as I imagine it being dark outside will drastically enhance the last lap of the show (no spoilers). The team on this show should commend themselves for a job well done. I wish them all the best.