Catherine Waller plays multiple roles in creepy one-person off-Broadway show (photo by Andrew Patino)
THE CREEPS
Playhouse 46 at St. Luke’s
308 West Forty-Sixth St. between Eighth & Ninth Aves.
Thursday – Monday through November 5, $49-$79
thecreepsoffbroadway.com
playhouse46.org
It you’re going to name a show The Creeps, you better make sure it’s plenty creepy. Catherine Waller’s one-woman show, The Creeps, is indeed plenty creepy. It’s also intimate, funny, and welcoming.
“Hey, how’s it going?” Waller asks as Lizardman, one of four characters she portrays over eighty minutes. And Lizardman is not going to proceed until he gets an answer, eventually engaging in brief chats with several willing audience members.
Serving as a kind of host to the eerie proceedings, Lizardman moves awkwardly across the floor, more insect than amphibian. “We’re like a family in here, you understand me? We’re all connected,” he says. “Here for an experience, and we will not disappoint. But you gotta pay attention. . . . Pay attention. Coz the devil’s in the details.” Lizardman promises a good time while laying out the rules, which advises no photos after the introduction and encourages the audience, seated on all four sides of a fog-laden black space in the center, to talk — not so much amongst themselves but to the characters.
Waller, wearing a tight black bodysuit throughout, alternates as Lizardman; Bill, a hardworking blind man shoveling coal in this dark dungeon; Harley the Harlett, a pregnant prostitute and addict looking for her next fix; and Stumpy, a young girl who has had her hands and feet cut off.
Bill, in a black knit hat and squatting on the floor, engages with the audience in his working-man Cockney accent, interested in who they are and what they do. He discusses the love between a parent and a child and wonders whether life is random or preconceived. He might be resigned to his fate, but he also marvels at life’s possibilities.
Harley leans against a lamppost, whispering to her belly that everything’s going to be all right when clearly it isn’t.
The Creeps supplies plenty of creeps at Playhouse 46 (photo by Andrew Patino)
And Stumpy, as the comic relief, shares jokes amid the sound of crying babies. In fact, she insists that the audience tell jokes; the night I went, they came fast and furious, each more tasteless than the last but delighting Stumpy.
Hovering above it all is the Doctor, an unseen villain who appears to revel in dispensing pain.
The set is spare, but Scott Monnin’s lighting and Hidenori Nakajo’s sound are extraordinary, immersing the audience in the mysterious proceedings, from Monnin’s shifting colored spots to Nakajo’s haunting soundscape. Waller might rely a bit too much on the audience; at the show I was at, some people were getting overly involved, trying to impress their friends and Waller by asking questions that were better left for the talented performer to answer as part of the narrative; it occasionally felt like asking Orson Welles in the middle of Citizen Kane what Rosebud means.
Written and created by Waller (Hounds, The Luring), The Creeps is a beguiling exploration of the dark side, which is too often dangerously near the marginalized and the forgotten. Lizardman, Bill, and Harlett all talk about “good times,” but the meaning is different for each character. Bill, Harlett, and Stumpy might be in horrific situations, but they persevere, even if the Doctor, representing an uncaring social system, is not about to help them in any traditional or necessary way.
Another concept that comes up often is “fun” and its cost. Lizardman offers, “You can’t have too much fun for free, you know?” Harley begs, “Just for a small fee, I can show you all a real good time. Would you like some fun?” And Bill explains, “How’d you get down here, eh? Not many people come down here. Not many people find this place. The fun’s upstairs! I hear it.”
In this case, though, the fun’s downstairs.
[Mark Rifkin is a Brooklyn-born, Manhattan-based writer and editor; you can follow him on Substack here.]