Barrymore's Ghost

Mr John Barrymore, or Jack Barrymore or Jake Barrymore, is presented as a ghost haunting an unknown theater which, at the moment, is in rehearsal for a play

The gods have sentenced Barrymore to this purgatorial existence as penance for his abandonment of the theater and the squandering of his talents in the pursuit of fame, greed and dissipation

Barrymore disputes these assertions of the gods as he painfully and humorously examines the spectrum of his life. He chronicles his ascendancy to the throne as the finest classical actor of his generation and his arrival to the pinnacle of movie stardom

Continuing with his intimate and compassionate relationships to his sister, Ethel, and his brother, Lionel; and the explosive debacles of his four marriages

The play has wit, terror, agony and hope, as we watch a mythological character explore the truths and deceptions of his extraordinary life