Interludes

VIEWPOINTS – This Halloween, treat yourself to some theater that will really get under your skin

• By drediman
• October 31, 2015
• No Comments

Boo! Are you getting tired of the same old entertainment options (aren’t those silly, not-so-scary haunted houses getting old?) this Halloween? Luckily, this Halloween season, there are a number of new shows on and off Broadway that deliver creepy thrills that go beyond the predictable, skin-deep cheap tricks. The questions these shows explore and the sustained atmosphere they create really get under your skin. Below, I’ve highlighted five shows that promise to haunt you well beyond this Halloween weekend.

EMPANADA LOCA
Off-Broadway, Play
Labyrinth Theater Company at the Bank Street Theater
1 hour, 40 minutes (with no intermission)
Through November 15

Daphne Rubin-Vega is giving a tour de force performance as Dolores and other characters in Aaron Mark’s grisly solo play, Empanada Loca, which updates the Sweeney Todd legend to Washington Heights and beyond (or shall I say, below?). It’s to Mr. Mark’s credit that the story is reinvigorated yet stays largely true to the underlying tale on which his play is based. Ms. Rubin-Vega, who is giving one of the season’s most piercingly direct and unnerving performances, is simply sensational. She has the uncanny ability to make us see the world through Dolores’s (formerly known as Sweeney) eyes. According to Dolores, it’s literally a dog-eats-dog world out there. After an evening of storytelling from Dolores’s point of view, the final image unveils her horrific past and reality as they truly are. It’s chilling stuff.

HIGHLY RECOMMENDED

THE HUMANS
Off-Broadway, Play
Roundabout Theatre Company at the Laura Pels Theatre
1 hour, 30 minutes (with no intermission)
Through January 3

Stephen Karam’s unsettling The Humans is hands-down the best play I’ve seen this year, thanks in no small part to director Joe Mantello’s impeccable production and his pitch-perfect cast. Mr. Karam’s latest play, which is essentially a family Thanksgiving gathering played out in real time, is a significant step forward from his already excellent body of work, which includes the impressive Speech & Debate and the moving 2012 Pulitzer Prize Finalist, Sons of the Prophet. What makes The Humans so extraordinary is its clear-eyed – even creepy – conviction that there’s more than life than meets the eye. Whether you call it the supernatural, God, or just symbolist expression, let me just say that I’ve never seen existential anxiety depicted so keenly onstage (bravo to Reed Birney – one of our very finest stage actors – as well). We’re taken to the brink of the abyss, where life and death meet and blur, and it’s harrowing. Not surprisingly, The Humans has already been picked up by producer Scott Rudin for a Broadway transfer later this season.

HIGHLY RECOMMENDED

SISTERS FOLLIES: BETWEEN TWO WORLDS
Off-Broadway, Musical
Abrons Arts Center
1 hour, 30 minutes (with no intermission)
Through November 7

After years of intense creativity, the endlessly inventive puppeteer Basil Twist was recently and deservedly named one of the 2015 MacArthur “Genius Grant” winners (his fellow winner was just another guy named Lin-Manuel Miranda). His latest fantastical show, Sisters Follies: Between Two Sisters, commemorates the centennial of the Neighborhood Playhouse (i.e., the mainstage at the Abrons Arts Center) and was put together in collaboration with two well-known downtown artists – the legendary drag performer Joey Arias and the fearless avant-garde performer Julie Atlas Muz. In the show, Mr. Arias and Ms. Atlas Muz giddily play the ghosts of the Lewisohn sisters, Alice and Irene, who founded the Neighborhood Playhouse. Sisters Follies is constructed as a musical revue that whimsically resuscitates the Lewisohn sisters’ greatest triumphs at the Playhouse. Mr. Twist accomplishes this with his trademark smirking wit and winning sense of spectacle that tickled and delighted this reviewer. As far as I could tell, his two muses seemed ecstatic to be running rampant within Mr. Twist’s imagination.

HIGHLY RECOMMENDED

THÉRÈSE RAQUIN
Broadway, Play
Roundabout Theatre at Studio 54
2 hours, 30 minutes (with one intermission)
Through January 3

Oh, those eyes. For much of the play, those belonging to Keira Knightley, who is currently making a fine Broadway debut in Helen Edmundson’s adaptation of Émile Zola’s Thérèse Raquin, burn holes of passion through walls as she sits off to the side for much of the first act. When is sexually awakened by the handsome Laurent (Matt Ryan), that passion starts to permeate her entire body – ending in murder. Scott Ellis’s handsome production (the scenic design is by Beowulf Boritt) does an impressive job of pulling you into its dark gothic setting in its slow-boiling first act. However, the long second act can’t quite sustain the momentum as the plot delves into the realm of psychological horror. Ms. Knightley and Mr. Ryan are given riveting support by stage veterans Gabriel Ebert and Judith Light.

SOMEWHAT RECOMMENDED

UNDERNEATH
Off-Broadway, Play
Fishamble at the Irish Arts Center
1 hour, 30 minutes (with no intermission)
Through November 1

Over at the Irish Arts Center, Ireland’s Fishamble is presenting Pat Kinevane’s oddly amiable, disorienting solo show Underneath (Mr. Kinevane also performs in it). From beyond the grave, Underneath tells the story of Her, a woman who was struck by lightning and disfigured early on in life. Played by a playfulness and frankness that’s unexpected, Mr. Kinevane gives Her a depth and multifariousness that’s unsettling. She’s accepted her lot in life, but not really – she in turn rages against and is contented with the cards she’s been dealt. Indeed, how she reacts to events in her life as she recounts then is just as unpredictable as the turn of events themselves, making for some fascinating viewing. This is an odd little show that I can’t place my fingers on, and I mean this as a compliment.

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