“THEATER FOR THE NEW CITY presents “Wm & Jas - A Ghost Story” by Gina Russell Tracy with Sean A. Buckley as William Gillette and Stephen Goodin playing James O’Neill in the story of two legends of the American Theatre striving to obtain what the other one has. Set at The Players club founded by their colleague, friend and mentor, Edwin Booth, on the evening of Gillette’s Broadway premiere of “Sherlock Holmes” fifteen blocks north at the Garrick, “Wm & Jas” explores the relationship between two men of the late 19th Century, one on the cusp of his most memorable creation, the other already feeling the shackles of his matinee idol success.

The ghosts they conjure up (beyond the characters they’ve built upon the timeless creations of Doyle and Dumas) go back to Shakespeare and Dickens and the lost souls of their youth, and ahead to their as-yet unrealized dreams as the two stars duel with words and bows and canes and foils, with each one striving to show the other the value of their own blessing. Spiritualism and Catholicism, marriage and children, fathers and sons, mentors and protégés, truth and illusion… all are laid bare in their battle of style and substance, until they are left with only each other and the winter’s night of Gramercy Park just outside.

Playwright Gina Russell Tracy’s work was most recently represented on TNC’s Community Stage two months ago when her Climate Change Cycle of Plays - “1969”, “Starlight” and “permafrost” - received an World Premiere Staged Reading as part of #ClimateWeekNYC 2021 Opening Day featuring Tony Capone, Shana Farr, Alison Fraser, Erin Hill, Michael Marotta, Ashley McLoud, Jeff McCarthy, Vincent Ticali, Mary Tierney and Sam Tsoutsouvas; back in early July film actress Tanna Frederick joined Mary Tierney in a World Premiere staged reading of “permafrost”. Prior to that Gina’s “Potters Wheel” received a World Premiere production with five separate casts in January of 2020 shortly before the pandemic closed down New York City.

“Wm & Jas - A Ghost Story” will run Thursday through Saturday at 8:00pm and Sunday at 3:30pm from December 16 through January 9; tickets are $18 ($15 for seniors/students) and may be purchased at http://www.theaterforthenewcity.net or by calling 212-254-1109”