Next Theatre Company.
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On one hand, this Clive Barker tale offers a fascinating take on the romance of the movies, our eagerness to forget who we are in favor of fantasy lives that are peroxide-charmed or tumbleweed-tough. On the other hand, it’s a drawn-out fat joke, in which the protagonist, a 225-pound female usher, kills the bloblike monster by sitting on it. Adapted by Charley Sherman and Steve Pickering–the team who so beautifully brought Barker’s In the Flesh to the Organic–this is an unfortunate exercise in Grand Guignol. As directed by Pickering, the play is balanced so precariously between horror and camp, pop philosophy and schlock, that it succeeds at virtually nothing. Told in flashback by the usher Birdy (Alison Halstead), the overwritten script includes so much exposition it’s a wonder we’re still confused by the end of the first act; but we are.
