You might ask why a theater called Chicago Shakespeare would produce a play based on a horror film franchise. The audience at Thursday’s opening of Paranormal Activity got a definitive answer: This taut and terrifying show gives you the willies, and maybe even the shakes.
Fly Davis’ shadowy set, a down-at-the-heel, two-story London house, stretches all the way across the Yard stage, giving writer Levi Holloway (the A Red Orchid Theatre ensemble member who wrote the post-apocalyptic nightmare Turret, which enjoyed a memorably creepy run starring Michael Shannon at the Chopin last year) and director Felix Barrett plenty of room to create how’d-they-do-that thrills and any number of demonic chills.
The inhabitants of the house–the living ones, anyway–are a young couple, self-absorbed James (Patrick Heusinger) and downbeat Louise (Cher Álvarez), who moved from Chicago to London for his job and to help Lou escape, perhaps literally, the demons sending her spiraling into depression.
But in London, something sinister and not of this world lives among them and begins driving the couple to the brink of madness with jump scares and fiendish psychological tortures. I don’t want to spoil the play’s many delicious frights (hat tip to illusions designer Chris Fisher, lighting designer Anna Watson, sound designer Gareth Fry and projections designer Luke Halls), so I’ll stop there. But if you ever meet a demonic presence terrifying enough to make a spiritualist (Kate Fry, delightful as always) flee the scene, well, buckle up.
Paranormal Activity is great, spooky fun, perfect for an October date night. It’s one of those shows where, when one character asks another one to do something, several members of the audience holler, “No!”
As is often the case in this genre, the supernatural climax answers some of the play’s burning questions while raising new ones in a final bid to unsettle viewers. Mission accomplished.
Sometimes it does help to get away from one’s old haunts, but only if there aren’t new ones lurking right around the corner.
Paranormal Activity runs through November 2 at Chicago Shakespeare Theater.
For a full roundup of reviews of this show, visit Theatre in Chicago.
Photo by Kyle Flubacker
