Interludes

THE HANGOVER REPORT – A living nightmare: Lucas Hnath’s stealthy psychological thriller THE THIN PLACE conjures first-hand terror

• By drediman
• December 19, 2019
• No Comments

Kelly McAndrew, Randy Danson, Triney Sandoval, and Emily Cass McDonnell in Playwrights Horizons’ production of “The Thin Place” by Lucas Hnath at the Peter Jay Sharp Theatre. Photo by Joan Marcus.

Of the crop of thriving contemporary playwrights, Lucas Hnath just might be the most consistently adventurous, both conceptually and stylistically. Over the years, he’s reliably surprised and delighted theatergoers with the quality and diversity of his output – his plays include A Public Reading of an Unproduced Screenplay About the Death of Walt Disney, The Christians, Red Speedo, Hillary and Clinton, and A Doll’s House, Part 2 (the latter two have received high profile Broadway productions) – a trait that’s fueled his steady ascent to the elite club of American playwriting. Now we have Mr. Hnath’s The Thin Place, which recently opened in a necessarily intimate production courtesy of Playwrights Horizons.

I’m happy to report that Mr. Hnath’s latest – a compact but slow-burning psychological thriller and a terrifying meditation on the unknown – continues the playwright’s string of beguiling successes. Look closely at The Thin Place, and you’ll see aspects from other notable works (e.g., shades of “M. Night” Shyamalan’s best film The Sixth Sense and Conor McPherson’s career-making play The Weir can be spotted). However, whereas those works are only sporadically terrifying, Mr. Hnath has made a point of sustaining and intensifying the menace in The Thin Place, taking full advantage of the unique ability of live performance to suffocate and unnerve. Indeed, the show feels uncomfortably claustrophobic in the Peter Jay Sharp Theatre, Playwrights Horizons smaller auditorium, and the use of darkness is downright rattling (more on this later).

The production has been stealthily staged by veteran Off-Broadway director Les Waters, who on the onset gives the play an unassuming quality. But as Mr. Hnath’s creepy tale slowly unfolds, an inescapable mounting sense of dread increasingly captivates the audience, culminating in a harrowing, anxiety-soaked climax during which everyone – actors and audience alike – is submerged into pitch black darkness (you’ve been warned). The performances across the board are practically perfect, especially the two primary performances from Emily Cass McDonnell and Randy Danson. Their performances are infused with both astonishing lived-in specificity and unsettling mystery that they blur the line between reality and fiction, conjuring up first-hand terror in a living, seething nightmare.

RECOMMENDED

THE THIN PLACE
Off-Broadway
Playwrights Horizons / Peter Jay Sharp Theatre
1 hour, 30 minutes (without an intermission)
Through January 26