Walking With Ghosts, the Broadway show based on Gabriel Byrne’s memoir, will close on Nov. 20, a little more than three weeks after it premiered, Deadline reports.
The one-man show starring Byrne, directed by Lonny Price, failed to find a wide audience at the Music Box Theatre, where it had opened on Oct. 27.
Byrne is best known for his performances in films including Miller’s Crossing and The Usual Suspects and television series such as In Treatment. His book, published in 2021 by Grove, covers his childhood in Dublin and his acting career; a critic for Kirkus gave it a starred review, calling it “??a melancholy but gemlike memoir, elegantly written and rich in hard experience.”
In an interview with Kirkus, the actor said that he didn’t want his book to be a typical celebrity memoir, filled with on-set anecdotes and name-dropping.
“I thought that if I could sensually recall details, in terms of sights and sounds and smells of those times, and align those with the history of those influences, then there could be something there,” he said.
Byrne’s show was met with mixed reviews from critics. At the New York Daily News, Chris Jones wrote, “[O]nly a fool could not see that this is a deeply honest and courageous work from an actor digging deep into what now matters to him, a self-probing of uncommon intensity that never comes off as overly egotistical or glib.”
But at The Wrap, Robert Hofler wrote, “At his best as an actor, he tends to disappear into a role—whether it was James Tyrone or James Tyrone Jr. He’s an actor who needs a big role, and the Byrne of Ghosts is all too ephemeral, not to mention forgettable.”
Michael Schaub, a journalist and regular contributor to NPR, lives near Austin, Texas.
