Ghostlight

A dad grieving a death finds an unusual outlet when he's recruited into a community production of Shakespeare, and exploring that tragedy helps him come to terms with his own.

Dan Mueller is a great big uncommunicative moose of a man. As played by Keith Kupferer, he’s a road construction worker in Illinois, a workaday type you drive by as he’s jackhammering or waving you past. You forget him as soon as you see him.

But in “Ghostlight,” Dan goes on an unexpected journey — a surprise, most of all, to himself.

After a particularly bad day at work, he’s recruited — ordered, really — to participate in a table reading of “Romeo and Juliet” by a cut-rate community theater troupe. He and the lead actress, Rita (Dolly de Leon), had previously butted heads over the noise his crew makes but she sees an opportunity to reach out, not to mention fill an empty slot.

“It seemed like you might want a chance at being someone else for awhile,” she explains with a shrug.

Thus sets off an unlikely redemption story, as Dan — the sort of gruff guy who disdains talking about feelings — using Shakespeare’s tragedy as a way to reconcile his own. We eventually learn that Dan recently lost someone very dear to him, and a pending lawsuit over the matter has prevented his family from really having a chance to come to terms with it.

His wife, Sharon (Tara Mallen), is a prototypical rock of a maternal figure, holding everyone else together while leaving very little space for herself. She and Dan barely talk, and physical intimacy is in an even shorter supply than the emotional kind.

If Sharon and Dan want to suffer in silence, their 16-year-old daughter, Daisy (Katherine May Kupferer — you may notice the shared last names), is raging loudly and angrily. After a violent confrontation she is in danger of being kicked out of her private school, the only one they can afford, so she is forced to go into therapy. Dan is invited to participate, but he peevishly dismisses it as not for “old-school types” like him.

Dan really doesn’t want anything to do with the play, but he suddenly finds a lot of free time on his hands and begins spending his afternoons and evenings rehearsing with the group. Lanora (Hana Dworkin) is the put-upon director, trying to stage a production with zero budget and cast made up of people who are mostly way too old for their parts. But she also works hard to build a positive, protective energy field around the troupe.

Rita is cast as Juliet despite being 60ish, which causes her much-younger counterpart to flee the production. Dan is astonished to be his replacement as Romeo, despite barely being able to speak the lines in a halting stutter, let alone have any idea what they mean.

And yet… something begins to grow in Dan’s heart. He’s able to express things with the other actors they he would never attempt in front of Daisy and Sharon. His anger, though a low boil, has saturated every molecule of his being to the point he can barely hide it from moment to moment. Acting provides a release valve that wasn’t there before.

Directed by Kelly O'Sullivan and Alex Thompson from a screenplay by O’Sullivan, “Ghostlight” is a little movie with big things to say. It’s a chance for a handful of actors to give some truly memorable performances, layered with subtle emotions and infused with an eye-level approach to how everyday people live, think and feel.

But it also reminds us why we forever turn to the arts — as a balm, as an incitement to action, and mostly as a way to understand this world we share and cope with it.