BARRYMORES GHOST

by Miller, Jason

BARRYMORE’S GHOST opens up the life of the legendary actor John Barrymore in a unique, theatrical manner. Mr. John Barrymore, or Jack Barrymore or Jake Barrymore, is presented as a ghost haunting an unknown theatre which, at the moment, is in rehearsal for a play. The gods have sentenced Barrymore to this purgatorial existence as penance for his abandonment of the theater and the squandering of his talents in the pursuit of fame, greed and dissipation. Barrymore disputes these assertions of the gods as he painfully and humorously examines the spectrum of his life. He chronicles his ascendancy to the throne as the finest classical actor of his generation; his arrival to the pinnacle of movie stardom; his intimate and compassionate relationships with his sister, Ethel, and his brother, Lionel, and the explosive debacles of his four marriages. The play has wit, terror, agony and hope, as we watch a mythological character explore the truths and deceptions of his extraordinary life.