A potentially sensational Grand-Guignol sort of drama, Inspired By True Events is performed in a realistic, immersive production. Only 35 people can witness each show, staged in a basement space at Theatre 154 in the West Village.
It’s a shame how the play, which opened Wednesday, scarcely delivers the shocks it promises.
Composed by Ryan Spahn, an actor making his debut as a playwright, and staged by Knud Adams, an Obie-winning director, this would-be thriller features super-realistic atmospherics.
The 90 minutes chronicled in Inspired By True Events slowly tick away early one evening in the dingy green room of a ratty community theater in downtown Rochester, New York.
Seated along two sides of the small performance space, the 35 viewers share fly-on-the-wall perspectives of the backstage action happening within a drab common area cluttered with battered furniture, a fridge, a coffee maker, and mirrored dressing tables littered with cosmetics, wig stands, and a stray pizza box. There is also a video monitor that discloses the doings out on the stage.
As Mary (Dana Scurlock), a motherly stage manager, tidies up the squalor before the next performance, it gradually is disclosed that the company’s current production premiered only the previous night to unexpected acclaim: rave reviews, tonight’s show suddenly sold out, the troupers’ loved ones expected for the performance — and yet that all is not well backstage.
A bleary Colin (Jack DiFalco), the young leading man, looks miserably hungover and more than usually distracted. “Did you take your meds?” inquires Mary. Preparing to perform the play, Colin’s fellow thespians Eileen (Mallory Portnoy) and Robert (Lou Liberatore) learn from Mary that Colin suddenly broke up with his girlfriend. The self-involved Eileen and Robert scarcely mind Colin’s problems and worry more about mice infesting the premises.
Then, after the show-within-the-show begins and Colin goes onstage alone to speak an extended monologue, something gruesome is found inside his gym bag.
Those contents cannot be revealed here, of course, but the discovery sends the others reeling in horror. Should they call police? Should they confront Colin? And should the show still go on?
Reportedly based on an actual incident, Inspired By True Events might be crafted for the stage as a blazing melodrama, a macabre comedy or a psychological thriller. Perhaps a mix of those genres.
Instead, the play initially presents a bland assemblage of expository, trivial exchanges mostly tedious to witness; much as these conversations probably are meant to function as a low-keyed prelude to the eventual revelation in the bag.
Following that nasty surprise, nicely realized for close quarters by props designer Sean Frank, what might be developed as a scary cat-and-mouse encounter among the characters — or some even more horrendous happening — soon dribbles away into an attenuated, tearful confessional and not so much drama afterward, in spite of plausible sound effects designed by Peter Mills Weiss.
Adams, who directed the world premieres of Primary Trust and English, both Pulitzer Prize winners, evidently strives more for verisimilitude here than for mining any possible thrills from a thoroughly dreary script.
Adams draws desultory work from Liberatore, Portnoy and Scurlock, bless their hearts, who are believably boring doing and saying the mundane stuff actors do and say when preparing to perform. The exception to such humdrum business is a weird — possibly symbolic? — several minutes when Eileen and Robert busily employ a fencing foil to kill mice they hear scrabbling within a wall. DiFalco’s extremely muted, at times nearly catatonic depiction of Colin offers little threat to the other characters, let alone to the audience.
The absence of palpable danger or genuine horror within such claustrophobic stage circumstances is especially disappointing. Lindsay G. Fuori’s scenic design, Frank’s extensive propping of the room, and Paige Seber’s unobtrusive lighting provide a realistic situation for sensational doings, but nothing much scary really happens.
For me, the most shocking thing about the event was a credit in the Out of the Box Theatrics program stating that Inspired by True Events previously received development workshops with New York Stage & Film, The Vineyard Theatre and EST. From the flat-liner results at Theatre 154, it appears the dramaturgs of those worthy organizations did not do well by the playwright.
Inspired By True Events opened July 16, 2024, at Theatre 154 and runs through August 4. Tickets and information: ootbtheatrics.com
