Gordon Pengilly
Title of Play
Flesh and Ghost
Date and Place of Reading
June 7, 2010
Manhattan Theatre Club Creative Center
New York City
Access the Play
Director
Lewis Magruder
Cast
Bonna Tea–Stage Directions
Kelly McAndrew–Angie
Joey Collins–Luke
Mandy Siegfried–Janny
Reyna De Courcy–Brenda
Caitlin Kinnunen–April
About the Playwright
Gordon Pengilly has written some fifty plays for TV, film, radio and stage. His work, including Seeds, Swipe, Metastasis, Drumheller Or Dangerous Times, Contraption, They Don’t Call Them Farmers Anymore, Bailey’s Way, Seeing In The Dark and The Work Play, has been produced across Canada and abroad. Hardhats And Stolen Hearts, co-created with Theatre Network, was one of the first Canadian plays to be performed Off-Broadway at the Performing Garage in 1978. His short screenplays and radio plays have been broadcast worldwide. Flesh & Ghost and Tom Form And The Speed Of Love were given readings by Broad Horizons Theatre Company (BHTC) with the latter being produced by BHTC at the Edmonton Fringe. Among his many awards he has received the
Writer’s Guild of Canada Jim Burt Prize, the BBC International Radio Drama Prize, and the W.O. Mitchell Book Prize for his first collection, Metastasis And Other Plays, published by NeWest Press in 2009.
About the Play
Michael has been tortured by grief and guilt. Seven years ago, he arrived late to pick up his daughter, April, from school. He never saw her again. Since then, he has become obsessed with the belief that she is still alive.
Intent on finding her, Michael uses a new-age-progression software to create a current-day likeness of April. After posting these around town, a young, homeless girl named Brenda shows up. While she resembles the likeness in the poster, there is the distinct possibility that she is an imposter, looking to take advantage of Michael’s emotional vulnerability and whatever cash might come with it.
When Brenda’s boyfriend, Luke, shows up, more possibilities emerge. Luke feels that he’s been in Michael’s house before and Michael feels he knows Luke. Also, Luke and Michael seem to have the same memory of meeting and courting Angie, Michael’s former wife and April’s mother.
Is Michael’s obsession to find April creating a false or parallel reality in which she might conceivably exist, albeit in the person of Brenda? Does Michael so hunger to find and be close to April that he imagines himself to be Luke, Brenda’s boyfriend? Is Michael’s mind unraveling or are these relationships generated by parallel realities, as suggested by space-time theories?
Ghost story, murder mystery, who-done-it, thriller, descent into psychosis—Flesh and Ghost is all of these, depending on how you look at it. Indeed, in this play, it would seem that everything is what it is, depending on how you look at it.