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TICKET ALERT: THE STRANGE UNDOING OF PRUDENCIA HART

National Theatre of Scotlands THE STRANGE UNDOING OF PRUDENCIA HART

The Strange Undoing of Prudencia Hart is making a return engagement to the McKittrick Hotel (photo by Jenny Anderson)

THE STRANGE UNDOING OF PRUDENCIA HART
The Heath in the McKittrick Hotel
542 West 27th St. between Tenth & Eleventh Aves.
Wednesday – Monday, March 10 – April 30, $123.50 – $150.50
mckittrickhotel.com

Six years ago, the McKittrick Hotel presented The Strange Undoing of Prudencia Hart, a devilishly fun immersive show in its Heath Bar. The production is back for a return engagement March 10 – April 30, and tickets are going fast, so you better hurry if you want to catch this popular international hit. Below is my original rave from January 2017.

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Since March 2011, audiences in masks have been roaming around the McKittrick Hotel in Chelsea, following characters into nearly every nook and cranny in Punchdrunk’s Sleep No More, a show, inspired by Macbeth, that redefined immersive theater. Now the same production company, Emursive, is presenting a twist on theatrical immersion with the National Theatre of Scotland’s international hit The Strange Undoing of Prudencia Hart, which continues at the McKittrick’s Heath Bar through April 23. This time, instead of the audience chasing the characters, the characters, who don masks at one point, move throughout the pub, talking to audience members, weaving around the space, sitting and standing on tables and chairs, and requesting audience help manufacturing some paper props. Created by writer David Greig (who appropriately enough wrote Dunsinane, a sequel to Macbeth) and director Wils Wilson, The Strange Undoing is about Edinburgh academic Prudencia Hart (Melody Grove), who is attending a conference in Kelso on border ballads, folk songs that were most famously written and collected by Sir Walter Scott. Also at the conference is Prudencia’s archrival, the motorcycle-riding Dr. Colin Syme (Paul McCole), who is described as “Dr. Colin Syme blokeish — obsessed with his kit / He’d eat himself if he was a biscuit.” (Much of the tale is related in delightful rhythmic couplets.) Snowed in on Midwinter’s Night, the prudish Prudencia rejects Colin’s offer to stay with him and instead makes her way through a Costco parking lot to a bed and breakfast that appears to be run by the devil himself (Peter Hannah). Meanwhile, musical director Alasdair Macrae and Annie Grace play multiple roles as well as various instruments, singing traditional ballads in addition to shanties written for the show, imbedded with a sly sense of humor. There’s even karaoke.

The National Theatre of Scotland’s The Strange Undoing of Prudencia Hart is devilishly good fun (photo by Jenny Anderson)

There are also plenty of self-referential treats. “This is exactly the sort of snow that if it were in a border ballad would poetically presage some kind of doom for an innocent heroine or an encounter on the moor with a sprite or villain or the losing of the heroine’s selfhood in the great white emptiness of the night,” Prudencia says at a critical juncture. Movement director Janice Parker keeps the cast, dressed in terrific period costumes with a contemporary twist, from knocking into the customers on Georgia McGuinness’s set, as references are made to the Proclaimers and Kylie Minogue, such topics as “Border Ballads: Neither Border nor Ballad?” and “The Topography of Hell in Scottish Balladry” are raised, the legendary ballad character Tam Lin is discussed, and free shots of Scotch are offered before the show and complimentary finger sandwiches are passed around at intermission. As with Sleep No More, the more you invest yourself into the proceedings, the more you will get out of it. Our enjoyment of the production was enhanced by our tablemates, who just happened to be the parents of one of the actors, making for some great conversation and many toasts. It’s all devilishly good fun, a time-traveling ballad that would make Sir Walter Scott proud.

BODY AS VESSEL: VIVIAN CACCURI AND MILES GREENBERG ON “THE SHADOW OF SPRING”

Vivian Caccuri and Miles Greenberg will discuss their collaboration “The Shadow of Spring” at the New Museum (photos courtesy of the artists)

Who: Vivian Caccuri, Miles Greenberg, Bernardo Mosqueira
What: Artist talk on “The Shadow of Spring”
Where: New Museum Theater, 235 Bowery at Prince
When: Thursday January 26, $10, 6:30
Why: You’d be doing yourself a disservice if you head to the New Museum to catch the subtle, intimate three-floor exhibition “Theaster Gates: Young Lords and Their Traces” before it closes on February 5 without also checking out multidisciplinary artists Vivian Caccuri and Miles Greenberg’s “The Shadow of Spring” in the lobby gallery.

Commissioned exclusively for the space, the show features two urethane fountains by Greenberg, each containing a kind of totem of broken human figures, in between two maplike embroidered wall hangings by Caccuri depicting faceless naked people engaged in various types of contact. The frames and base are speaker systems thumping out music that merges with the sounds of water dripping in the fountains, sending ritualistic vibrations throughout the room. Caccuri’s Vessel Flame and Vessel Body were inspired by Dante’s Inferno and raves held at her studio; the sounds were adapted from recordings of Greenberg’s body following workouts. Greenberg’s Mars and Janus statues were developed from one of his durational performances and used 3D scans to create the fragmented body parts. This is the first time Caccuri and Greenberg have collaborated together, presenting an encased environment that explores the relationship between sound and body, ritual and community, and nature and humanity.

On January 26 at 6:30, Caccuri, born and based in São Paulo, and Greenberg, who was born in Montreal and lives and works in New York and Reykjavik, Iceland, will be at the New Museum Theater for the artist talk “Body as Vessel,” in which they will discuss “The Shadow of Spring” in addition to their individual practices and processes; Brazilian exhibition curator Bernardo Mosqueira will moderate the conversation.

RONALD K. BROWN/EVIDENCE: OPEN DOOR/THE EQUALITY OF NIGHT AND DAY/GRACE

Ronald K. Brown’s The Equality of Night and Day makes its stunning NYC premiere at the Joyce this week (photo by Rose Eichenbaum)

Ronald K. Brown/EVIDENCE, a Dance Company
The Joyce Theater
175 Eighth Ave. at 19th St.
January 17-22, $51-$71
212-691-9740
www.joyce.org
www.evidencedance.com

“When I work, in all situations, people meet me and they say, ‘You create family wherever you go,’ and so I think I have a nurturing side but I demand a lot,” Brooklyn-based choreographer Ronald K. Brown explains in an Alvin Ailey video about the making of Open Door, a piece Brown made for Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater in 2015. “Why do you have to open the door, how do you open the door, this whole thing of easing, pushing through the door . . .”

Brown created a sense of family and community yet again when his troupe, EVIDENCE, a Dance Company, kicked off its home season at the Joyce on January 17. The program started, appropriately enough, with the company premiere of Open Door, which was inspired by Brown’s travels to Cuba. In front of a screen that changes colors (the lighting is by Tsubasa Kamei), Arturo O’Farrill’s eight-piece Afro Latin Jazz Ensemble performs Luis Demetrio’s “La Puerta,” Tito Puente’s “Picadillo,” and O’Farrill’s “All of the Americas” (from his “Afro Latin Jazz Suite”) and “Vaca Frita” as nine dancers move about the stage, led by solos and duets by Shaylin D. Watson and Isaiah K. Harvey. Originally commissioned for AAADT in 2015, it’s an uplifting twenty-six minutes, with the dancers often putting out their palms in gestures of welcome, beckoning not only fellow dancers but immigrants from Cuba and around the globe.

Open Door is just the right aperitif for the world premiere of The Equality of Night and Day (TEND), a sizzling emotional work in which Brown gets more explicit as he tackles his recurrent themes of social injustice and racism. Five men (Demetrius Burns, Austin Coats, Randall Riley, Christopher Salango, Harvey) and five women (Watson, Shayla Caldwell, Joyce Edwards, Stephanie Chronopoulos, Breana Moore), in loose-fitting flowing blue costumes by Omotayo Wunmi Olaiya, gather and separate to a powerful original score by pianist Jason Moran and the rallying words of activist and writer Angela Davis, who declared in a 2017 speech at Brown, “During the coming period, our primary job will be to build community, to create community — in ways that allow us to understand that the work that we do now does matter, even if we cannot see in an immediate sense the consequences of the work we are doing. It will matter eventually.”

Photos of protests from the last half century and more, curated by Debra Wills, are projected on the back screen, instilling a sense of immediacy in the proceedings, which are highlighted by poignant movement by Burns, Caldwell, and Edwards, the men at one point covering their faces and letting out primeval screams. Later the dancers remove their tops and walk around in a kind of memorial prayer for Black bodies, reacting to Davis’s facts about the racial imbalance in crime and punishment.

The evening concludes with Brown’s half-hour classic, Grace, an appropriate finale providing subtle elegance following the exuberance of Open Door and the psychological intensity of TEND. Commissioned for AAADT in 1999, the deeply spiritual piece begins with Edwards standing in a large doorway at the back of the stage; as opposed to the first two works, where the dancers often came onto the stage with a swagger, here they mostly walk on and off calmly, five women and six men in lovely white or red costumes by Olaiya. They strut out their elbows and their hands reach for the sky to songs by Duke Ellington, Roy Davis Jr., and Fela Kuti, spreading the energy to the audience.

Some years back, I saw Grace at the Joyce with Brown himself dancing a major role. The Bed-Stuy native saved one final, exhilarating moment for the curtain call on January 17, cementing the loving community he had built over the course of the program. He came onstage to uproarious applause, walking gently with a four-pronged cane and being helped by his partner and associate artistic director, Arcell Cabuag. Brown suffered a debilitating stroke in April 2021, at the age of fifty-four, shortly after a residency at Jacob’s Pillow to develop TEND, but has vowed to walk again on his own, and he is ahead of his doctors’ prognosis. The smile on his face was infectious, assuring everyone that there is a promising future to look forward to for all of us.

SLAMDANCE: ONLOOKERS

Kimi Takesue’s Onlookers looks at tourists and locals in Laos

ONLOOKERS (Kimi Takesue, 2023)
Streaming January 23-29
slamdance.com
www.onlookersfilm.com

“Seeing comes before words. The child looks and recognizes before it can speak,” John Berger writes in the seminal text Ways of Seeing. “But there is also another sense in which seeing comes before words. It is seeing which establishes our place in the surrounding world; we explain that world with words, but words can never undo the fact that we are surrounded by it. The relation between what we see and what we know is never settled.”

In documentary filmmaker Kimi Takesue’s Onlookers, having its world premiere at Slamdance in Park City, Utah, this weekend and available for streaming January 23-29, there are no words, no dialogue — just seventy-two minutes of stunning visuals exploring what we see and what we know, what we are present for and what we are absent for.

The film takes place in various parts of Laos as director, producer, cinematographer, sound recordist, and editor Takesue sets up her camera and leaves it there as scenes unfold in real time and with natural sound, from a breathtaking fourteen-second sunset to five and a half minutes of six women sitting by the side of the road, preparing to fill begging bowls for a long line of Buddhist monks. Animals graze in a temple courtyard as bells chime. Women sell goods at an open-air market. Rivers flow, wind rustles trees, roosters crow, birds chirp, a cat rests on a step, a man relaxes in a hammock, all taking their time, no one in a hurry.

Then the tourists arrive; a few run up to take pictures of a monk beating a drum, then walk away, not actually stopping to watch and listen. A woman snaps a photo of three fellow sightseers standing atop a small, raging waterfall as a man fishes below. A local worker waits as a woman checks her cell phone, as if he isn’t there, standing next to her. A group of backpackers gets a prime view at a boat racing festival while locals observe from the shore. On a mountain, six tourists search for the best angle to take selfies. Visitors at a guest house sit in an outdoor lounge and watch Friends.

Born in Colorado and raised in Hawai’i and Massachusetts, Takesue has previously made Where Are You Taking Me? in Uganda, Heaven’s Crossroad in Vietnam, and 95 and 6 to Go in Hawai’i, about reconnecting with her grandfather. In Onlookers, she is not necessarily criticizing the tourists or celebrating the Laotian locals; she’s merely showing how people witness and experience the world, particularly when it comes to travelers and residents.

She beautifully captures this relationship in a short but captivating scene that begins with a static shot of an old religious shrine that looks like it hasn’t been in operation for years. A young woman enters the frame, sits down, poses for a selfie, stands up, snaps a photo of the shrine, then saunters off, never once stopping to just look at the shrine itself. The camera lingers on the building for several seconds, with nobody around, just the decaying structure set against a blue sky and between lush greenery.

We see what we want to see, when we want to see it, not always recognizing what is right in front of us, whether we’re at home or on vacation. It reminded me of people who go to a museum and take pictures of classic artworks but only see them through the lens of their phone rather than experiencing them with their own eyes. In fact, each frame of Onlookers is composed like a painting that slowly comes to life.

“The way we see things is affected by what we know or what we believe,” Berger writes in his book. “Yet this seeing which comes before words, and can never be quite covered by them, is not a question of mechanically reacting to stimuli. (It can only be thought of in this way if one isolates the small part of the process which concerns the eye’s retina.) We only see what we look at. To look is an act of choice. As a result of this act, what we see is brought within our reach — though not necessarily within arm’s reach. To touch something is to situate oneself in relation to it. . . . We never look at just one thing; we are always looking at the relation between things and ourselves. Our vision is continually active, continually moving, continually holding things in a circle around itself, constituting what is present to us as we are. Soon after we can see, we are aware that we can also be seen.”

In all films, the audience might not have a choice of what they’re looking at, but they can decide for themselves what they’re seeing. And in the case of Onlookers, what they’re seeing is a gorgeous portrait of ourselves that no selfie can catch.

THEASTER GATES: YOUNG LORDS AND THEIR TRACES — SPECIAL EVENTS

Theaster Gates pays homage to his father and his own childhood in Sweet Chariot and Seven Songs for Black Chapel #1–7 at the New Museum (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

THEASTER GATES: YOUNG LORDS AND THEIR TRACES
New Museum
235 Bowery at Prince St.
Tuesday – Sunday through February 5, $12-$18
www.newmuseum.org
online slideshow

“I make designations between a thing that I made that’s art, a thing I had fabricated that’s art, and a thing that was a preexisting thing that I put alongside other things that were made or fabricated. I don’t necessarily say, ‘Oh, this is all art,’ even though it’s all art, but I think that there are moments when I’m just trying to put things alongside each other like you would in your house or like you would in a shrine,” Chicago-born multidisciplinary artist Theaster Gates says in a video for his elegiac, beautiful, deeply moving “Theaster Gates: Young Lords and Their Traces,” continuing at the New Museum through February 5. “This show is about people who I’ve lost and the things that they left for me, or people who I love and the monument of love that I want to show for them.”

In the three-floor exhibition, curated by Massimiliano Gioni and Gary Carrion-Murayari, Gates pays homage to curator Okwui Enwezor, writer bell hooks, fashion designer Virgil Abloh, scholar Robert Bird, and enslaved potter David Drake (Dave the Potter) as well as his mother (Bathroom Believer), a devout Christian, and his father, a roofer (Roof Strategies for Museum Corridor, Sweet Chariot). Gates repurposes found objects gathered from demolished buildings and construction, including from St. Laurence Church on the South Side of Chicago and Park Avenue Armory in Manhattan, where he hosted “Black Artists Retreat 2019: Sonic Imagination.” Among the highlights of the show are Black Madonna, encased in a vitrine; the short film A Clay Sermon; a music video of Gates and the Black Monks of Mississippi performing an extended improvisational “Amazing Grace”; the fifty-foot-long Roof Strategies for Museum Corridor; and the silver monochrome Seven Songs for Black Chapel, which harkens back to Gates’s childhood.

There are still several special events being held at the New Museum in conjunction with this first-ever museum retrospective of the work of Gates, who turns fifty this year. On January 19 at 6:30 ($10), the panel discussion “Resurrections: Theaster Gates” features curators Jessica Bell Brown and Dieter Roelstraete and LAXART director Hamza Walker, moderated by Carrion-Murayari. On January 21 at noon (free with museum admission), independent archivist and memory worker Zakiya Collier will facilitate an “Out of Bounds” gallery talk about Gates’s archiving practices. On January 21-22 and from January 31 to February 3 (except January 30; free with museum admission), keyboardist and composer Shedrick Mitchell will activate the Hammond B3 organ in A Heavenly Chord, performing his unique mix of Gospel, reggae, R&B, jazz, and new age music. From February 3 to 5, Gates and the Black Monks will play impromptu performances in the fourth-floor gallery. And on February 4 at 4:00 ($8), Gates will be in conversation with writer and scholar Saidiya Hartman. But you needn’t rely on a special event to get you to the New Museum to see this well-designed, uncluttered, intimate exhibit, which also deals with social injustice, racism, and faith.

KIMBERLY AKIMBO

Kimberly (Victoria Clark) and Seth (Justin Cooley) become good friends in Kimberly Akimbo (photo © Joan Marcus)

KIMBERLY AKIMBO
Booth Theatre
222 West 45th St. between Broadway & Eighth Ave.
Tuesday – Sunday through March 26, $84 – $419
kimberlyakimbothemusical.com

Broadway shows about death and dying tend to be serious affairs. Plays such as The Shadow Box, Marvin’s Room, Angels in America, ’night, Mother, and Whose Life Is It Anyway? are not lighthearted comedies; Wit is not exactly a laugh riot. (By the way, those six works have four Pulitzers between them.) But right now, Mike Birbiglia is facing his own mortality every night in his hilarious one-man show The Old Man & the Pool, at the Vivian Beaumont, while Kimberly Akimbo, an unusual, life-affirming musical about a high school girl with a terminal illness, is delighting audiences at the Booth.

Making a smooth transition from its fall 2021 debut at the Atlantic, Kimberly Akimbo is the must-see musical of the season. Adapted by Pulitzer winner David Lindsay-Abaire from his 2000 play of the same name, the show tackles how awkward kids can be during their teen years, as evidenced by the title. Kimberly Levaco (Victoria Clark), who is approaching her sixteenth birthday, becomes friends with super-nerd Seth (Justin Cooley), who is obsessed with anagrams; rearranging the letters in her name, he rechristens her Cleverly Akimbo. The show, the character, and Clark are all that and more.

Kimberly has an extremely rare genetic disorder, similar to progeria, in which she ages at four or five times the normal rate. Most girls look forward to turning sweet sixteen, but for Kimberly, she would be nearing the equivalent of eighty; she is magnificently portrayed by Tony winner Clark, who is sixty-three but infuses the part with a glorious enthusiasm and affection for life and what it offers, living every minute to its fullest, understanding it could — and will — all be over at any second.

Kimberly’s mother, Pattie (Alli Mauzey), is pregnant, stuck at home with carpal tunnel in both hands and making videos for her unborn child. “There’s a high probability that I might be dead soon. / So I won’t be around when you’re growing up, / and this video is the only way for you to know who I was. / And I want you to know who I was because / people are going to tell you things about me that just aren’t true,” she sings insensitively, bringing up her own potential death and focusing on her fetus instead of paying attention to Kimberly, who really is dying and might never get to meet her sibling.

Kimberly’s father, Buddy (Steven Boyer), is a low-level gambler and drinker who works at a gas station and does not know how to express love for his daughter; he’s still too much of a child himself. “I should be happy for her,” he sings when she makes a new friend, but he doesn’t know how. “I should be happy.” Later, he says, “I never pictured myself a father. I mean, I like kids, I just . . . I’m more of a bachelor uncle type.” He is more excited than Kimberly when he wins a Game Boy in a bet.

Kimberly (Victoria Clark, center) has issues with her parents (Alli Mauzey and Steven Boyer) in Broadway musical (photo © Joan Marcus)

Kimberly teams up with Seth for their sophomore bio class project, in which they have to explore a disease. Seth wants to use Kimberly’s condition, but she’s not so sure. Meanwhile, the quartet of Delia (Olivia Elease Hardy), Martin (Fernell Hogan), Aaron (Michael Iskander), and Teresa (Nina White) is pairing up for the project and preparing for Show Choir, a competition against other schools. In a fab subplot, they are also trying to figure out how to pair up relationship-wise, not quite knowing yet who’s gay or straight and who likes who.

They are planning on performing a medley from Dreamgirls.. It’s no accident that Lindsay-Abaire chose that particular musical, whose title song begins, “Every man has his own special dream / and your dream’s just about to come true / Life’s not as bad as it may seem if you / open your eyes to what’s in front of you.” High school kids are supposed to dream about the future, but Kimberly is running out of time. Meanwhile their main rival, West Orange, is doing Evita, a musical about Argentinian leader Eva Perón, whose life was cut short by cancer at the age of thirty-three.

Everything goes even more akimbo when Buddy’s sister, Debra (Bonnie Milligan), the black sheep of the family, arrives unexpectedly; the Levacos had escaped Lodi to get away from Debra, who has a penchant for breaking the law with a greedy selfishness and spending time in the hoosegow. She has a master plan involving bank fraud and a stolen US mailbox — itself a funny prop because the younger generations today mainly think of them as relics in the age of social media and texting, similar to pay phones — and attempts to get Kimberly, Seth, Delia, Martin, Aaron, and Teresa to help her with the scheme.

As Kimberly’s sixteenth birthday approaches, the cleverly askew storylines all come together for a poignant finale.

Kimberly Akimbo is about much more than a teen with a horrible disease; it’s a spectacularly insightful depiction of the joys and fears that teens experience, at school and at home, with friends and family, as they mature into young adults. Kimberly has an illness that strikes only one in fifty million people — meaning only seven people in the United States might have it — but she represents us all, children and grown-ups. Lindsay-Abaire’s (Rabbit Hole, Ripcord) book and lyrics capture the exhilarating highs and the devastating lows that are parts of everyday life, which is like an endless series of anagrams we try to unravel; when Pattie says, “I hate getting old,” she’s not just speaking for herself. And when she shares her anxiety over having another baby and Kimberly declares, “Scared it would be like me?,” it’s a feeling many can relate to. As Kimberly sings in “Anagram”: “With a change of perspective . . . ha-ha-ha-ha . . . / nothing’s defective / I wonder what you see / when you look at me.”

Tony winner Jeanine Tesori’s (Fun Home, Caroline, or Change) score matches the ups and downs of the plot, from the tender piano of “Anagram” to the jubilance of “Skater Planet” and “This Time,” with playful choreography by Danny Mefford (how do they ice skate like that?), realistic costumes by Sarah Laux, and terrific sets by David Zinn that range from a suburban skating rink to a high school hallway to the Levaco living room.

Mauzey (Wicked, Cry-Baby) and Boyer (Hand to God, Time and the Conways) are terrific as Kimberly’s parents, who attempt to navigate through what for them is also a traumatic situation, knowing their teenage daughter will not be with them much longer, while Jimmy Awards finalist Cooley excels as the awkward but determined and hopeful Seth, and Milligan (Head Over Heels, Gigantic), as a thief, essentially steals every scene she’s in.

But the centerpiece of the show is the unforgettable performance by Clark (Gigi, Sister Act), who won her Tony for The Light in the Piazza before most of the rest of the cast members were born, or were mere babes. Her every movement and gesture, her voice, and, most critically, her bright, searching eyes will have you convinced she is a fifteen-year-old high school student carrying all the requisite baggage — while also knowing that any day could be her last. But the show is not about aging and death; it’s an infectious celebration of life.

At one point, Martin says, “Who cares? It’s not like any of this counts.” Seth responds, “What do you mean?” Martin answers, “I mean, high school. This town. It’s not even real life. It’s just the crap you have to get through before you get to the good part.” Teresa chimes in, “And what’s the good part?” Martin answers, “Um, the rest of our lives?” Kimberly Akimbo makes it clear that right now is the good part, no matter how long the rest of your life is.

BLOOD COUNTESS

Countess Elizabeth Báthory (Sara Fellini) is surrounded by her husband (Luke Couzens) and a demon (Jillian Cicalese) in spit&vigor’s Blood Countess (photo by Giancarlo Osaben)

BLOOD COUNTESS
The Players Theatre
115 MacDougal St. between West Third & Bleecker Sts.
Thursday – Sunday through February 5, $52-$99
www.spitnvigor.com

I specifically chose Friday the thirteenth to see spit&vigor’s Blood Countess, about real-life Hungarian serial killer Countess Elizabeth Báthory de Ecsed. I had previously enjoyed the NYC-based company’s The Wake of Dorcas Kelly, about an eighteenth-century Irish murderer, and the livestreamed Luna Eclipse, which involved yet another serial killer, the Axeman of New Orleans.

Alas, this Friday the thirteenth proved to be unlucky.

I cannot in good faith review the production, as several unforeseen distractions prevented me from having the experience the talented troupe intended. During the first ten minutes, a man sitting across the aisle from me continually checked his cell phone. The fourth time was enough for me; I got up and asked him to please keep it off. He looked at me as if I were a lunatic; I told him the light was distracting — turning on a cell phone in a dark theater instantly gets the attention of anyone in the proximity of the digital abuser — and he begrudgingly turned it off. As I sat back down, both he and the woman with him gave me accusatory stares, as if I had done something untenable. Later in the first act, the woman turned her cell phone on, bathing her face in a majestic glow; if she had left it on for one second longer, I would have said something again, but I did not want to interfere with other people’s experience or with the cast itself in the small, intimate Players Theatre.

However, another light bothered me as well; the set includes several long, vertical mirrors, and during the scenes that take place in the countess’s living room, one of the lights reflected right into my eyes, forcing me to twist uncomfortably in my chair to avoid the glare. It is general admission, so I could have moved, but I did not want to get up again and disturb those around me or onstage.

Evil doings are afoot in Blood Countess at the Players Theatre (photo by Giancarlo Osaben)

Finally, and inexplicably, during the first half of the second act, another conversation could be distinctly heard. My wife and I could not tell whether it was coming from the comedy club or the theater on either side of the Players, from The Dog Show upstairs, or from a radio or television in a connected apartment. At times we could make out specific words and statements, and the noise came at inopportune moments. At one point, a threatened young woman asked a priest about her stay at the countess’s estate, “Will I die there, Father?” and one of the people in the disembodied conversation let out a loud “Ha ha ha!”

When Elizabeth tells her Goth-Shakespearean fool, “I’m exhausted. The sound of their chirpy voices is a knife in my head,” I thought it might have been an ad-lib, especially when that was shortly followed by Elizabeth’s pronouncement: “I need more wine. If I hear another giggle I think I will chop them all up now and gorge myself.”

The horror-comedy, which runs 135 minutes with intermission, was written by Kelleen Conway Blanchard and is directed by producer Nick Thomas. I have to give kudos to the cast for soldiering on despite this terrible interference: visual designer Sara Fellini as the countess; fight choreographer Luke Couzens as Ferenc Nádasdy, Elizabeth’s husband; Sara Santucci as Dorkus, the embattled family maid; Perri Yaniv as the priest; Samantha Haviland as Fitzco, the evil harlequin fool; Andrea Woodbridge as Elizabeth’s high-brow mother; Jillian Cicalese as the demonic Horned Woman, in a stunning costume on stilts; and Chloé Bell, Silvana Carranza, and Cait Murphy as potential victims.

Thus, while I feel I can’t objectively review the show, I can say that I was rooting for one more murder, the bloodier the better: whoever was responsible for that baffling, godforsaken noise, especially on Friday the thirteenth.