Live Shots: ‘Finnegan’s Wake’ summons Irish ghosts to SF Mint

Finnegan’s Wake: An Immersive Ghost Story, presented by 13th Floor Theater, plunges audience members into the beautiful, dysfunctional Finnegan-Plurabelle family. Scenic designer Treigh Buchet, lighting designer Meghan Schultz, and ephemera designer Michelle Josette Crashette transfigure the San Francisco Mint into an Irish family home on the banks of a mystical river. Audience members are free to explore the spaces before the show begins with libation in hand. When the dinner bell rings, the show commences.

As the family gathers to honor elderly Aunt Myrtle’s death, a ghost arrives—and serves as a catalyst for the family to reconcile the past and the present. Each family member has a slightly different memory, piece of information, part of the story, way of understanding. These familial fragments are mirrored in printed programs containing different elements—“The Haunted Road” is a poem, “The Selkie and The Sea Captain” is a story, etc. Each adds a layer of understanding to the work as a whole. In the same way that the multiple views of the characters create a rich and nuanced story.

Guiding the audience from room to room and providing commentary on the action are the witty and sartorially delightful family Goddess Boys, Seine (Lyra Levin) and Loire Plurabelle (Colin Epstein). Walker Staples as Kevin Finnegan and Kit Gripp as Livia Anna Plurabelle Finnegan composed the music and perform it live for the show, enriching the storytelling with songs.

Several times the characters note “the veil is thin tonight.” The suggestion that the division between the spiritual world and material world is less rigid highlights one of creative director Jenny McAllister’s themes—people unnecessarily fuel false dichotomies: Catholics and Pagans, Finnegans and Plurabelles, children and adults, past and present, the quick and the dead.

As the family explore secrets, old grudges, fond memories, trauma-bonding, and unfinished business, the actors embody fraught familial relationships with equal parts love and resentment. Inspired by James Joyce’s epic novel Finnegans Wake, the Irish folk song “Finnegan’s Wake” and her own Irish-American Catholic childhood, McAllister’s script deftly limns a complex dreamscape to explore what it means to be a part of a family.

Finnegan’s Wake is currently sold out, so join the 13th Floor mailing list for news about its next immersive adventure.