You know the suspicious situation and have over your playgoing, moviegoing years. Their automobile runs into trouble on the road in the night, and they’re forced to look for help at the nearest house where they see a welcoming window.
Well, here it is again in Levi Holloway’s Grey House, directed by Joe Mantello, who’s also relying on Natasha Katz’s scary lighting and Tom Gibbons’ frightful sound and music to amplify the thrills, chills, frills, spills, and, sure as shootin’, the threatening kills.
This 1977 time the damnably irresistible hokum involves married couple Henry (Paul Sparks) and Max (understudy Claire Karpen at the preview I attended, in for Tatiana Maslany). On the way to see to her deceased father’s holdings with Max driving, they lose their way. Trying to avoid a deer, they crash. (Would there be a play if they hadn’t?)
[Read Frank Scheck’s ★★★☆☆ review here.]
Luckily or maybe not so, they’re already on the grey house property, the ground floor interior of which audience captives have already seen. It isn’t, as Scott Pask’s cabin design has it, overwhelmingly grey but is definitely country-Gothic eerie.
We’ve even already witnessed weird goings-on by a clutch of four young girls – Marlow (Sophia Anne Caruso), deaf Bernie (Millicent Simmonds), Squirrel (Colby Kipnes), “A1656” (Alyssa Emily Marvin) – and one very young boy (Eamon Patrick O’Connell), whom they call Mr. Man. Asleep on a couch is the older Raleigh (Laurie Metcalf, back on stage after too long an absence.)
Yes, we’ve already watched this passel of children behave oddly. They’ve excitedly performed a drilled routine to Mountain Man’s “Stella,” which begins with the hint-hint lyric, “It’s a call coming from your house.” Already, we’ve had it strongly suggested that when whoever was in the unseen crash (no matter what the movie or play) knocks or pounds on the door, he, she or they are in for a bumpy ride.
Not that on Max and Henry entering what is now an empty room, they immediately sense danger. Okay, Henry does prompt an audience-wide laugh when he says, “I’ve seen this movie” and then, cheerfully, “We don’t make it.” That gets spectators prepared for the subsequent goose bumps. And sure, Holloway inserts several other goose-bumpy hint-hint remarks.
When the girls, the boy, and Raleigh slowly make themselves known, however, they are helpful, quickly splintering the broken ankle Henry has sustained and offering him one of the many brews in identical containers filling the refrigerator that AI656 identifies as – okay another hint-hint – “the nectar of dead men.” So’s not to let the moment slip by only vaguely noted, she joins the other girls repeating “the nectar of dead men.”
That’ll be enough of the hints. There are many, and any more will start enlarging into spoilers. Of course, there’s no call to risk spoiling what in time Holloway eventually frames as a ghost story. Don’t be surprised – er, no – do be surprised should you happen to get an early glimpse of such a supernatural creature.
Truth is, Holloway isn’t just having fun with a ghost story. He’s after something far more dire, something far more indicting of (all right, here’s a potential spoiler) man’s inhumanity not only to men and women but to children. His vision is so dark that it might cast shadows on the enjoyment of patrons present just for the fun of such ghastly, ghostly baubles. (Am I wrong, or is Judith Ivey’s 1999 Voices in the Dark appearance – this cabin is in the Adirondacks – the last time Broadway faced similar menace?)
It’s no news that Metcalf in a long grey wig is an ace as the sometime controlling, sometimes sullen, continually uncategorizable Raleigh, who is and isn’t the children’s mother. Sparks, another reliable vet, handles Henry’s mounting ambivalences with increasingly frightening aplomb. Possibly more surprising in their precocious roles as children of mystery are Caruso, Simmonds, Kipnes, Marvin, O’Connell, and Cyndi Coyne in a brief appearance as a character called The Ancient. Understudy Karpen is entirely convincing as a women understandably confused about her strange surroundings.
Chief among them is the intense, stern-eyed Caruso, playing the organizing Marlow. As an inflexible, tyrannical adolescent thriving on nastiness, Caruso realizes she’s been handed the opportunity to steal scenes and does so without any sign of false humility. Cheers to her.
It may be that the challenging intricacies of Holloway’s plot – of what unappealingly unfolds in the final few moments – will result in some head-scratching and “Huh, what?” mouthings from those exiting the hushed auditorium. Spectators who get Holloway’s full intentions, who follow his incriminating sentiments about the nectar of dead men origins will not only declare themselves scarily entertained but will continue considering the charges he has incorporated about man’s cruelty throughout the ages.
Grey House opened June 1, 2023, at the Lyceum Theatre. Tickets and information: greyhousebroadway.com
