The Turn of the Screw (review)

Photo credit: Kelly Frisch

Spoilers ahoy!

Henry James' novella is arguably one of the absolute top tier ghost stories of all time (most would probably make it along with The Haunting of Hill House and The Shining as something of a haunting trilogy).  

The Sierra Madre Playhouse now hosts a new adaptation, The Turn of the Screw by Jeffrey Hatcher.  Like some other versions, this boils down a medium-sized cast of characters to a duel of actors -- Shayna Gabrielle as the unnamed governess who is by far the central character, and Michael Mullen as everyone else, including a wealthy but callow gentleman, a ghost, the housekeeper at a manor house, and a little boy named Miles.  Essentially the plot centers around a sheltered young woman, a clergyman's daughter, seeking employment as a governess.  The position she finds has been rejected by many others, not least because her employer--who has become the reluctant guardian of his young niece and nephew following their parents' deaths--wants to be left alone.  He is not to be contacted ever or at all, no matter what the circumstances.  

The fact she accepts this position, her first, actually hints at much.  Herein lies the key to the story's great appeal.  Hints abound, which even when explicit seem less than crystal.  She learns her predecessor committed suicide following a wildly passionate affair with another servant which resulted in pregnancy.  He killed himself soon after.  But...the governess begins to see them.  Even hear them.  She becomes convinced the manor house is indeed haunted and the ghosts are targeting the two children.

Gabrielle and Mullen bring all this amazingly to life.  The latter must readily and often play a wide variety of roles, each with a strong personality.  Yet the former literally contains the meat of the ninety-minute play.  We soon realize that whether the ghosts are real or not (and they may not be), the spanking new governess has some profound issues which now distort every moment of her life.  Her imagination clearly reshapes reality more or less nonstop.  By the end of her interview with the children's uncle, for example, in which he demands never to hear from her ever again, she is imagining herself as his wife.  In her eyes the two children are perfect, must be perfect, so if they do anything im-perfect there must be literally demonic forces at work. Increasingly she sinks into a labyrinth of fierce, protective paranoia.  

At last the results of course prove tragic.  More, under the direction of Jeramiah Peay these two actors weave a spell of imagination equal in power to this repressed governess' wildest fantasies.  "Compelling" is almost the least way to describe the performance.  Quite literally, I was on the edge of my seat and gripping the arms of my chair within twenty minutes!  Almost every word and gesture, every single silence and look did indeed turn the screw a little tighter.  That we in the end don't know the final answer to almost anything makes up part of the horror.  More, the cast by never for a moment letting up on living these moments, terror and hope and ambiguities intact, brought the story to life.

As of this writing, The Turn of the Screw has three remaining performances.  Friday July 28 and Saturday July 28 at 8pm, with a 2pm matinee on Sunday July 30, 2023 at the Sierra Madre Playhouse, 87 West Sierra Madre Blvd, Sierra Madre, CA 91024.

The Birthday Party (review)

 Spoilers ahoy! 

Way back in the 1980s, as a theatre arts major at my University, I was cast in a production of The Birthday Party by Harold Pinter.  My advisor felt this was a good experience for us all, doing such a challenging play, stretching out creative muscles.  To this day I believe she was absolutely right!

Still when I learned City Garage was doing the same play I eagerly anticipated seeing it done right, but folks better than a clutch of talented twenty-somethings with little real experience.

Yep.  I was right.  This production knocked it out of the park.  Pinter can be a strange writer, and it isn't immediately clear to some what his plays are about.  This one focuses on an older married couple--Meg (Peggy Flood) and Petey (Andy Kallok)--who run a tiny boarding house in a seaside town.  They have one boarder, Stanley (Isaac Strackonis), a surly young man whom Meg clearly has something of a crush upon, a fact he uses in some mean but hardly psychopathic or even very extreme ways.  He's the big mystery at the beginning.  Why is he here?  Where is he from?  And why, oh why, does he react so strongly to the random gossip of someone asking about some gentlemen asking about letting the other room?  He ends up denying such men exist, could exist, evidently in his mind they dare not exist so they must not!

Why?

Under the direction of Frederique Michel, all this set up wonderfully brings out that sense of mystery, that sense that Stanley does not belong here, that his behavior does not match this situation.  The pretty neighbor/visitor Lulu (Savannah Schakett), for example.  Something about the way she flirts with him, or more accurately the way he responds, feels very off.  Something about the whole situation feels as there's a missing piece, some secret that might explain it all.

Then, the gentlemen do arrive.  Goldberg (Troy Dunn) and McCann (Gifford Irvine) show up while everyone else is out.  Is this the place?  Yes.  This job is a little different.  Still Goldberg assures McCann he personally chose him.  There'll be no trouble.  Not really.  McCann feels jittery but says he'll calm down once they begin.  Goldberg it seems has a certain "position."  All rather vague, with hints of...well, an organization of some kind, a job that must be done.  Pretty soon we start to believe these are not their real names at all, but rather aliases.  That sense grows as the story proceeds.

Stanley's reaction upon seeing them confirms something we already suspect--one way or another, the "job" is Him.  He doesn't come to pieces, cry, beg, or even run.  Rather, he tries to bluff and/or negotiate, even insisting there's been some kind of misunderstanding.  But neither Goldberg nor McCann rise to any of this.

Meg of course welcomes them with open arms when she gets home.  Goldberg proves a charmer in the presence of a woman.  Stanley goes back to his room, while the Gentlemen persuade Meg that Stanley's birthday is nigh and they need to throw him a party.

Hence the title.

And ultimately what almost surreal, deeply uncomfortable on many levels the build up and then the actual events of that birthday party prove to be.  Anytime these men are alone with Stanley, they grind on him in a variety of strange and ultimately distracting ways.  They clearly mean him no good.  He recognizes who they are, or at least who they represent, and is terrified.  Yet no one actually reveals any details.  Ever.  I felt certain the actors had some precise idea of what lay behind all this, but it is never quite revealed.  A hint or two about Ireland, but that might be misdirection.

Because this entire play focuses on fear.  Fear in many if not all its many avatars.  Of death or revenge or punishment of some kind.  Of failure.  Of living on the edge with nothing but luck and personal wits to keep from falling.  Of aging and making mistakes.  In one case, fear of learning too much, of having some illusions stripped away, losing a kind of innocence as it were.  Terror of one little mistake, and maybe someone noticing it.  An aching fear of realizing something unsuspected, against which one is impotent.  Fear of all things malign and inevitable, from decay and time to consequences from the past.

Ultimately how does it matter exactly who Goldberg and McCann are, in their terrifying reality, each of them also afraid not that it matters to their victims?  What was it Lulu learned that night with Goldberg?  Details are hardly important, just what we see of her the next morning, self-righteously trying to blame others for a glimpse she got of herself (although, to be sure, she too was a victim).  For that matter, it cannot matter what Stanley did.  He knows.  He reacts to it, to his situation, and crumbles under the weight.  That is what we see, made all the more vivid because the context remains hidden.  In the best horror stories the monsters stays in the shadows after all.  

The entire cast escorts us through a maze of monsters, expertly making our skins crawl without once needing any masked killer to spring out with a plastic set of claws.  By stirring our imaginations, the terror ends up being very personal--and thus, fascinating.

The Birthday Party plays Fridays and Saturdays at 8pm, Sundays at 4pm until Saturday July 23, 2022 at City Garage, 2525 Michigan Avenue. Building T1, Santa Monica CA 90404.

Blood Alley (review)

Spoilers ahoy!

I imagine when theatre goers hear the name "Zombie Joes" among the things coming to mind are words like "edgy" "dark" "disturbing".  More than anything else, this demonstrates a success in marketing a brand.  ZJU remains open and producing original works for decades.  One reason is that very success in letting the audience know what to expect.

At the same time, Blood Alley offers us an example of taking that brand to the extreme.  Even more than the company's (often brilliant, certainly wildly popular) signature show Urban Death, this one pushes boundaries.  I've often called theatre at this venue "theatre of dreams" because it captures a sense of watching/participating in a dream.  Sometimes those dreams are nightmares.

This one certainly qualifies as a nightmare.  Lots of nightmares.  So much so I feel trigger warnings might be appropriate.  Anyone who has recently been the victim of any violence, especially sexual violence, might want to reconsider seeing this work. It aims to disturb, with all the power of a Dionysian ritual in Ancient Greece--and succeeds!

Credit: ZJU

Much of what the (fearless) cast produces under the direction of Zombie Joe gets under your skin.  Sometimes for reasons obvious, but other times strangely covert. Distortion, fear, a sense of decadence or subtle madness permeate many of the vignettes making up the experience.  In fact there's relatively little actual violence enacted during the hour-long performance.  What we do see is often brief, but vivid.

Sometimes it is also very simple.  Like the suitcase.  You'll find out what I mean if you go.

Or just a turnabout in ways we don't expect--a weirdly un-erotic fully nude dance which involves distortion, first by a lovely woman then a fairly handsome young man. 

Fortunately there's also some humor.  A good thing, because some release from the tension was frankly needed.  Part of the humor arose from musician Kevin Van Cott as a policeman (interestingly, outfitted as a London Bobby) who is freaking out over what he's seen or heard of this place--Blood Alley.  As far as the title goes, I immediately thought of Harry Potter's Diagon Alley but where all the dark things go and fester, where fears and neuroses scuttle amid the shadows and debris, and hungers we don't like to admit we feel emerge.

Credit: ZJU

To give an example of what this show entails, it contained the most harrowing rape I've ever seen on stage.  What made it most powerful was how Ian Heath in effect assaulted Charlotte Bjornbak via telekinesis or remote control.  They never even touched!  But my own flesh crawled.

And likewise it proved fascinating whenever the performance ventured into sexuality--be it lesbian make-out session or the strutting of some artfully posing streetwalkers (Daniel Palma, Elif Savas, Allison Fogarty, and Cassie Carpenter) that sexuality never ventures into the erotic.  Sex without pleasure, or even the hint of pleasure!

Credit: ZJU

Theatre of Nightmares.  As in waking up in a cold sweat...

I don't want to describe any more of what happens, since that might rob this amazing show of its impact, but let again praise the very brave performers--especially those not yet mentioned by name:  Liliane Laborde-Edozien, Kelly Powers,  Adam Shows,  and Alex G-Smith.  An excessively brave cast this!

Blood Alley plays at 11pm Fridays and Saturdays until April 9, 2016 at Zombie Joes, 4850 Lankershim Blvd. (just south of the NoHo sign) North Hollywood CA 91601.

KARAOKEAPOCALYPSE (review)

Spoilers ahoy!

Kinda/sorta. Actually, a show like this is very difficult to spoil, because it changes.  But I'll get to that in a moment.

Remember when  you were maybe thirteen years old? And you had this great idea of a party? One where you'd get to celebrate all those horror movies and monster comics and weird stuff you loved?  Of course you didn't have any money, but if only there were some basement or attic room--a place to set up some black lights and enact some really cool creepy stuff from the Halloween Haunted House last year, but this time with some friends who really understood?

I never had that party, for a whole host of reasons. Probably only a very few of us ever did. But this show--Karaokeapocalypse at ZJU--is exactly that event!

We have a cast in ordinary, grungy clothes, wearing ghoulish if generic makeup. We have spooky music to dance to--sung live and sometimes we the audience joined in (at one point given makeshift musical instruments). Action figures re-enacted a cheesy movie, followed by a werewolf puppet singing a song. Games and dance. Posters used to set the mood exactly the way we imagined doing so way back in our early teens.

But I cannot give you a cast list per se, because each performance will have a different cast! Each show will consist of different, fresh, fun and (yeah, let us say it) a little bit sophmoric "acts." Which is the whole point! In Australia, where December falls squarely in the heat of summer, there's a holiday called Christmas in July.  That is really what this show ends up as in many ways--Halloween in Spring!

Therein lies the key to the essential question every theatre review seeks to answer--should you go to see this show?  It all depends on how much you like Halloween. Does this kind of party sound like fun, keeping in mind it isn't run by a bunch of barely-teenagers who don't really know what they're doing? No, these folks are theatre professionals and having a great time.  You're invited to come along.  To listen to recordings of Vincent Price and sing "They're Coming to Take Me Away" and just relax.  Halloween revisited.

Me, I had a blast!


Karaokeapocalypse plays Friday nights at 11pm until April 10, 2015 at Zombie Joe's Underground Theatre Group, 4850 Lankershim Blvd (across the street from KFC, just south of the NoHo sign) North Hollywood CA 91601. Tix are $15 and you can get reservations by called (818) 202-4120 or by going to zombiejoes.tix.com

Urban Death Tour of Terror (review)

Spoilers Ahoy! (not really)

This makes for an unusual review, because it isn't of a theatre work. Except it is. Yet, it isn't. Kinda. Sorta.

Urban Death Tour of Terror is Zombie Joe's effort into running a Haunted House for the Halloween season.  Honestly, I was a tad puzzled about what to expect, but looking forward to it! Scheduled myself for "opening night" but the second show. Initially just wanted to show up a tad later, but I got the added fun of seeing folks emerging from the first--looking thrillingly scared!

Now, really, giving away spoilers of a Haunted House would be just plain MEAN. So I'm not going to do that.

But--I will make some comments and give some advice. Seem fair?

First and foremost--the signs say this is not a show for children. Believe it! While some kids might have zero problem with the content, many parents would almost certainly not choose to expose children (i.e. those under 13 or so) to this material. Many would not want anyone in their mid-teens so exposed (although I don't think I'd be that squeamish, but...that is me). The folks at ZJU took the time to post such a warning. Pay attention!

Second, don't go alone. If you're the sort to scream and jump, you'll feel better with a companion. If, like myself, you aren't that type you'll enjoy it more with someone who is! Mind you, I think that counts as excellent advice for any haunted house!

Having said that, let me tell you this makes for a nice and creepy entertainment perfectly in line with the season and holiday! Frankly too many Haunted Houses (at least the one's I've been to) pretty much count on the audience/visitors knowing what will happen. More or less. They build on the anticipation of what everyone expects, then fulfills that expectation, hopefully with energy and a bit of style. Not this one! UBTOT in fact does the exact opposite! And kudos to them for that!

In essence what they've done is turn the lobby into a maze. Hardly a long one, but you make your way through images that genuinely disturb as well as frighten. Really feels like entering some Bad Place, like the Overlook Hotel at full throttle or some building in the town of Silent Hill.  We end up in the main theatre, where the victims...er, patrons...gather until a show begins. Not a long show. But at times a very skin-crawling one. I'm not a person who revels in horror or terror. When entering events like this I usually slip into a "detached" mode. It allows me to enjoy without getting freaked out. But here there were moments when I could feel my blood pressure rise and my breath quicken, then stop for tense moments. Even now, my imagination wanders back to some of the images and events of that night--and I shudder. Just a little.

Then, we go back through the maze to exit--and the maze has changed! It now has somewhat different denizens and events we have not seen before! Again, no details. That would be wrong. But I certainly saw some people pretty much RUN out!

So this haunted house has my recommendation! Urban Death Tour of Terror runs Friday and Saturday nights at 8:30pm, 9:15pm, 10pm, 10:45pm and 11:30pm through Saturday November 2, 2013. You can see it yourself at Zombie Joe's Underground Theatre at 4850 Lankershim, North Hollywood CA 91601. Just across the street from KFC and just south of the NoHo sign!

The Fall (Review)

Spoilers Ahoy!

Guillermo del Toro and Chuck Hogan have written/are writing a vampire trilogy that some have dubbed "The Anti-Twilight."  Titled The Fall it picks up pretty much where the previous (first) novel left off.  New York City has been infected by a kind of vampiric disease, a mutating virus spread by worms that rewrites the victims' DNA into a kind of gigantic insect.  They still look more-or-less human.  Kinda/sorta.  Unless you get a good look at the red eyes, the hairless and earless head.  Or their hands.  If they open their mouths, the illusion is gone.  A four-foot fleshy stinger awaits its chance to burrow into a victim and draw out blood like a mosquito.

Ick.

The Fall marks a deliberate attempt to tell a tale of horror.  For the record, the writers succeed.  The unnamed (at first) Master Vampire behind this plague threatening to destroy New York has much more in common with The Master from Buffy than the same-named villain from Doctor Who.  He is a demon, a towering giant of viciousness with the patience of long years and centuries to plan.  He is one of seven original Vampires, but the one gone most rogue.  Interestingly, he is also the one most capable of seeing humanity's potential, of using what (to him) are just wonderful human ideas.

Like concentration camps.

Much of the novel consists of racing against time by our lead characters, unraveling a few of the mysteries about vampires and what The Master seems to be aiming for.  As other cities begin to suffer the fate of New York, one looms most large--what is The Master's ultimate plan?  He clearly doesn't want to turn all  humanity into vampires.  That would be stupid, and suicidal.  So what is his goal?  The Van Helsing-like Abraham Setrakian believes he knows a way to find out.  More, to learn a key to snatching some kind of victory from the gore-drenched jaws of holocaust.  It all lies in an incredibly rare book based on an obscure Mesopotamian text, a tome said to contain the origins of the Ancients, the seven eldest vampires of all.

Eph Goodweather, former head of the CDC and now a fugitive from forces allied to The Master, struggles not only to find a way to help stop a plague but to protect his beloved son from his vampirized ex-wife.  Making up a third is Vasily Fet, one-time professional exterminator and now very effective vampire-hunter.  How the lives of all these characters tend to intertwine in fascinating ways is part of what makes the novel so much fun.  A few in-jokes are a little much (if you're familiar with Mexican wrestler Santo movies, you'll soon see what I mean--but it works).  The overall impact is a dizzying roller-coaster ride through an intricate chamber of horrors.

Yes, I know that is a mixed metaphor.  I don't care.

One thing that continues to bother me is the treatment of the characer Nora, Eph's co-worker as well as once-and-future lover.  In the first novel The Strain she was something of a cypher.  We get to know her a little bit better in this film, including some hint of a tendency to place herself in orbit around others.  But at heart she's a secondary character, nothing more.  I admit to a prejudice towards stories with stronger female roles.

Elsewhere I've complained a bit about how some authors pull their dramatic punch.  Not in this book!  One expects our heroes to somehow save the day.  They don't.  They survive, most of them.  They come together towards a greater goal.  They do accomplish things, vital things.  Indeed, one can almost see the seeds of ultimate victory against The Master might have been sewn in these pages.  But if this were the story of World War Two, the novel ends with the fall of France and the Nazi blitz of London beginning its reign of death onto London.  As Eph and Nora are joined by Fet and the former gang-member Gus, as they watch the dominoes set up by The Master's plan begin to fall one-by-one, we can only hope this is the darkest hour.

It probably is not.  Hogan and Del toro accomplish what relatively few authors manage to do--surprise me.  They have primed my anticipation and hopes that one year from now I'll be writing another review in equally glowing terms.