Alex Albrecht, from left, Khnemu Menu-Ra and Valerie Cambron rehearse a scene in the Ghostlight Ensemble production “Drink the Past Dry,” a site-specific piece performed at Mrs. Murphy & Sons Irish Bistro, April 9, 2025, in Chicago. (Armando L. Sanchez/Chicago Tribune)

Ghostlight’s upcoming production, Drink the Past Dry, was featured in the Chicago Tribune’s Theatre Loop.

Director Maria Burnham and actors Khnemu Menu-Ra and Katharine Jordan spoke with reporter Emily McClanathan about the show, which opens on Friday, May 2 (with a preview performance this weekend at 3 p.m. on Sunday, April 27.

Read all about the show and the work behind it here.

Six years ago, the in-house pub at Chicago Shakespeare Theater moonlighted as a performance space for a touring production of Roddy Doyle’s “Two Pints” by Ireland’s Abbey Theatre. Audience members — who sat at the pub’s tables with drinks in hand — spent a couple of hours eavesdropping on two longtime friends at the bar, their conversations meandering between the mundane and the profound.
This spring, the upstairs bar at Mrs. Murphy & Sons Irish Bistro in Chicago’s North Center neighborhood will similarly transform into a theater venue for “Drink the Past Dry” by Ghostlight Ensemble, a local company with a penchant for site-specific productions. Written and directed by Maria Burnham, this world premiere puts a science fiction twist on the otherwise familiar setting of a Chicago bar: at this watering hole, if you sit on the right stool and order a particular drink, you can travel in time.