Greenwich Village Gazette
Review by Arlene McKanic]
Ghosts of 14th Street

    The Ghosts of 14th Street, a charming and vibrant musical by Barbara Kahn, is and is not old fashioned -- its centerpiece features two gay romances, something an impresario probably wouldn’t have presented at the Olympic Theatre one hundred years ago. But its themes of friendship, love, inclusion and the joys of the theater are timeless.

    The play indeed, is set in 1908.  A troupe of actors, including the has been Edward J. Thornton III (Dan Burkarth) and his pretty wife Vera (Jocelyn Adams) are making a movie. The art form is new and some people are sure it’s not going to last. How can anything replace vaudeville, after all? The Thornton's’ fellow thespians include the impossibly pretty Al (Matt Lara), and the brother-sister act of Danny and Teresa "Tess" Cortez (Robert Gonzalez Jr. and Victoria Levin) who are trying to write a musical on the side. Even the film’s crew, Stephen (Kyle Wood) and Horace (Jake Nicholson) are desperately trying to write a song for a contest and win a big $10, which, back in the day, would have paid a nice chunk of one’s rent, if not all of it.

Complicating the set up is the theater’s Jewish cleaning lady, Lily (Mallory Portnoy)  recently arrived from the Ukraine. She develops a crush on Tess just about the time that Danny develops a crush on Al.  Then there’s Phillip "Pip" Gibson (Larray Grimes), the African American dancer. Lily boards with Phillip’s mother and they have become close friends, to the disgust of Lily’s estranged husband Jake (Dan McVey, who also does a turn as Mr. G, the film’s director), who’s not only taken on the American name of Dutch, but the American disease of racism.

He’s sure his estranged wife and Pip are having an affair, and he’s been in the U.S. long enough to know that’s a chaloshes.  He’s even taken up with some Irish thugs, also played by Wood and Nicholson, to rough Phillip up and send Lily a message or two.  What the film crew does to throw Dutch and his goons off the trail makes up the delightful second act, which is all singing and dancing, and a screening of the little Biograph film that everyone’s been working on in Act One.

The show is full of lovely performances. Burkarth is great as the ham actor who’s been reduced to making movies -- you may at first think him a creep till he learns better, and the other cast members perform with a good-hearted verve. The only villain is McVey’s rat-like Jake, but the play is so charitable that even he gets off easy. In Kahn’s vision Fourteenth street at the turn of the last century was simply the place for everyone -- male, female, gay, straight, ethnic minority -- and if you were like Jake and didn’t wish to join the party, it was entirely your loss. Kahn’s direction is spirited -- the over-the-top acting she has the cast do during Act One is both hilarious and exactly in the style of those old silents. 

The period costumes by Alice J. Garland are gorgeous; check out the feathered and beribboned hat Vera wears as she steps out with her husband.

Set designer Mark Marcante takes advantage of the warehouse like space to create the sort of comfortably messy set that was probably the norm for silent movie sets and old time theaters, and Richard Reta’s lighting design complements it nicely. Of course, in between scenes we’re treated to music by Scott Joplin and other ragtime masters.
   

The Ghosts of 14th Street, presented by The Theater for the New City, will be at 155 1st Avenue at 10th Street till March 30.