Back in July, I wrote this in a post about the world premiere of Ghost Light at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival:
When Some events are so much larger than life that one can really only apprehend them on a grand scale, as part of the sweep of history and not occurrences that turned the lives of actual individuals upside down.
Arguably, the assassination of Harvey Milk has become such an event. Over the years, as it's become iconized in documentary, opera, and major motion picture, one begins to understand how the murder of his co-victim, San Francisco Mayor George Moscone, became relegated to almost an after-thought.
But if Moscone lives on in the public's consciousness as merely a subset of the Milk story, he plays a much bigger part in the mindset of Jonathan Moscone. He's the Artistic Director of California Shakespeare Theater who shares a last name with the former mayor because he happens to be his son.
Moscone delves into the effect of his father's death on the 14-year-old boy that he was and the man that he became in Ghost Light, which he conceived with Berkeley Rep's Tony Taccone, who also wrote the script.
Last night, Ghost Light opened at Berkeley Rep. Reviews from Robert Hurwitt in the Chronicle and Karen D'Souza in the San Jose Mercury News are extremely positive.
KQED's Cy Musiker interviewed Moscone, who also directed the play, during its Ashland run in July. Moscone talked about his family and the emotions he has had to cope with around his father's death. Parts of the conversation are below; an edited transcript follows each audio clip:
Jonathan Moscone on the eclipsing of his father's death by that of Harvey Milk