Cast members Suki Berry, left, and Benjamin Reynolds perform their roles in a scene that takes place in the set’s family room during a performance of 13th Floor Theater’s immersive play “Finnegan’s Wake: An Immersive Irish Ghost Story” in San Francisco on Thursday, April 2, 2026. The play takes places across several room of the mint building with audience members moving rooms with the cast to different scenes.
Laura Morton/Special to The Chronicle
Cast members (at right) perform their roles in a scene that takes place in the family kitchen as audience members (at left) look on during a performance of 13th Floor Theater’s immersive play “Finnegan’s Wake: An Immersive Irish Ghost Story” at the Old Mint in San Francisco on Thursday, April 2, 2026.
Laura Morton/Special to The Chronicle
Cast members Walker Staples, left, and Kit Gripp perform their roles while moving the audience to a different room during a performance of 13th Floor Theater’s immersive play “Finnegan’s Wake: An Immersive Irish Ghost Story” at the Old Mint in San Francisco.
Laura Morton/Special to The Chronicle
Cast members Suki Berry, Benjamin Reynolds, Ben Elie and Nick Dickson (left to right) perform their roles in a scene that takes place in the living room during a performance of 13th Floor Theater’s immersive play “Finnegan’s Wake: An Immersive Irish Ghost Story.”
Laura Morton/Special to The Chronicle
Cast member Hunter McNair performs the role of Humphrey Finnegan in a scene that takes place in the hallway as the audience looks on during a performance of 13th Floor Theater’s immersive play “Finnegan’s Wake: An Immersive Irish Ghost Story.”
Laura Morton/Special to The Chronicle
In the heart of the San Francisco Mint, time folds in on itself. A clutter of forgotten toys and haphazardly hidden beer bottles hint at a tumultuous teenage past. A mystical river, a reed-lined hallway drenched in cerulean light, bisects this time capsule presented in the Finnegan family home.
This is the vividly engrossing world of 13th Floor Theater’s latest production, “Finnegan’s Wake: An Immersive Irish Ghost Story,” which opened Thursday, April 2.
“Finnegan’s Wake: An Immersive Irish Ghost Story”: Written and directed by Jenny McAllister. Through Sunday, April 12. Two hours, 40 minutes with a 15-minute intermission. $45-$70. San Francisco Mint, 88 Fifth St., S.F. www.13thfloortheater.org
Upon entering, guests become members of the troubled titular lineage. Because everyone is family, the invitation grants permission to wander the house’s numerous rooms. Feel free to snoop at will until the ringing of a bell summons the party to the kitchen. A rugged sea captain named Humphrey Finnegan (Hunter MacNair) welcomes the clan to his abode in a thick Irish accent, bearing the weight of old grief.
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In addition to being a celebration of life for “dear” Aunt Myrtle, the gathering serves as homecoming for Humphrey’s adult children, witchy Issy (Lyra Levin), who carries on the thread of banshee blood through her maternal line; military man Sean (Ben Élie), who retains the altruism of his Boy Scout days; and flamboyant Kevin (Walker Staples), who returns post-therapy with minimal tolerance for his family’s dysfunction.
Nick Dickson performs the role of the ghost of Tim Finnegan (center) as audience members look on during a performance of 13th Floor Theater’s immersive play “Finnegan’s Wake: An Immersive Irish Ghost Story” on Thursday, April 2, 2026.
Laura Morton/Special to The Chronicle
Then comes the fourth sibling no one expected to see — eldest brother Tim Finnegan (Nick Dickson the first weekend, Blake Sugarman the second), who returns as a ghost after 17 years and whose cause of death is mysteriously missing from collective memory.
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Inspired by James Joyce’s 1937 novel of the same name, the 13th Floor’s adaptation chisels a coherent family drama out of its notoriously convoluted source material and places its story in 1998. This modernization adds familiarity and dimension to characters who are originally much less accessible. Here, adolescent angst is signified by punk rock posters and a Misfits tee, while escapist comfort is found in Dungeon & Dragons campaigns.
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Creative Director Jenny McAllister, who wrote and directed this adaptation, clearly realizes immersive theater’s potential to capture the very elements of experimental storytelling that made Joyce’s literature so difficult — fragmented narrative, jumping perspectives, cyclical time.
The wonderful execution of this vision is perhaps epitomized in act one, when the audience is split into two groups and taken to two concurrent scenes. Each group experiences the same temporal stretch twice, once in the family room and once in the kitchen. Heavy family secrets, unsettling memories of youth and rekindlings of past relationships unfold across the two locations. Note the signs of blossoming individuality, as well as the Catholic iconography watching over it all.
Cast members Jenny McAllister, left, and Nick Dickson perform their roles in a scene that takes places in the family kitchen during a performance of 13th Floor Theater’s immersive play “Finnegan’s Wake: An Immersive Irish Ghost Story.”
Laura Morton/Special to The Chronicle
Sound spilling between the rooms unites the two halves of the scene through a shared auditory chaos, making the performance feel truly omnidirectional. The cast frequently moves between the two spaces while staying impressively synced throughout several minutes of concurrent action.
The thoughtful mapping of family spaces onto the existing rooms of the Mint creates a fluid, logical layout that’s remarkably homey. The placement of the shrine to matriarch Livia Anna (Kit Gripp) inside a vault and the projection of the river on the huge main hallway are clever uses of what could have been potentially problematic features of the space.
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One challenge of the location that is not so easily remediated is the inconsistent acoustics of some of the Mint’s stone rooms. Though not detrimental, reverb unfortunately muddies some lines.
Cast member Kit Gripp performs in the role a selkie who is the family matriarch with Hunter MacNair during a performance of 13th Floor Theater’s immersive play “Finnegan’s Wake: An Immersive Irish Ghost Story.”
Laura Morton/Special to The Chronicle
Among the tremendously talented cast, MacNair and Gripp are particularly electric in their shared scenes. Their hard-hearted characters at times seem diametrically opposed, yet desirous gazes and glimpses of physical tenderness reveal softness at the core of their turbulent coupling.
Also magnificent is Élie, who embodies Sean so well and so completely that actor and character are virtually indistinguishable, even after a 17-year time jump.
Live music composed and performed by Gripp and Staples is another highlight. Their unearthly harmonies are raw with human emotion.
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“Finnegan’s Wake” opens in the present and closes in the past, ending with loose threads untied. It’s a fragment in its completion, seemingly containing and resisting its own finality.
Joy Diamond is a freelance writer.