GHOST IN THE MACHINE
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Though he reveals key clues as shrewdly as any suspense novelist, Gilman never answers the questions he raises; in this intellectual/metaphysical whodunit, the audience is never sure exactly what was done, not to mention by whom. Answers, after all, are a form of reconciliation; and Ghost in the Machine is about irreconcilable differences–between the sexes, between generations, between values, between cultures.
On the surface, Ghost suggests a 1990s version of Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, a viciously funny parade of historically loaded psychosexual party games among a quartet of east-coast academics. The setting is the home of Wes and Nancy Westlund–he’s a professor of comparative religion, she’s a musicologist–and, like Edward Albee’s George and Martha, they’ve got guests. Not just drop-ins for a drink, but houseguests: Matt Carroll, a musicologist friend of Nancy’s, and his girlfriend Kim. Wes, Nancy, and Matt are in their 40s; Kim is in her 20s. She’s an outsider here not only because of her age but because, while her companions’ professional specialties focus on the past, hers focuses on the future: she’s a computer scientist and a specialist in game theory. (She’s also the only Jew in a nest of WASPs–an issue that, while never raised overtly, is all too clear in the condescending sneer with which her last name, Goldfarb, is articulated.)
