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‘Ghostlight’ Review: The Duo Behind ‘Saint Frances’ Find Fresh Layers in Shakespeare’s ‘Romeo and Juliet’
With 'Ghostlight,' co-directors Alex Thompson and Kelly O’Sullivan celebrate the power of theater to move audiences and actors alike.
The sensitive — but also considerably more conservative — follow-up project for “Saint Frances” screenwriter Kelly O’Sullivan and co-director (and partner) Alex Thompson celebrates the healing power of art, as a family shaken by its eldest son’s suicide uses a community theater production of “Romeo and Juliet” to work through emotions they haven’t been able to discuss openly at home. Here, she takes elements that feature regularly in Sundance Film Festival dramas — grieving families, difficult teens, small-town communities — and rearranges them into a surprising and moving narrative. However hard to accept, it’s not just convenient, but essential to the story that Dan doesn’t know the plot of “Romeo and Juliet.” And yet, his daughter certainly does, reciting the play’s prologue when asked about it and showing him the Baz Luhrmann version on her laptop.
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