On-Stage: Princes of Darkness

It makes sense Lucifer would have a spot in his heart for those famously dressed in black. He can also appreciate the wreckage Hamlet and Dracula left in their wakes. As for Oedipus, even if his wardrobe was not black, he certainly took a long, deep look into the heart of darkness. Your master of ceremonies, the Trickster himself channels all three literary denizens of the dark side in Princes of Darkness, the latest genre stage production directed by Rachel Klein, now running at the Theater for the New City as part of the Dream Up Festival.

It is an age old complaint: the world is in abject chaos and God let it all fall to seed. Ever the Devil, Lucifer suggests those mortals in the audience could do a better job running the universe. Vanity has always been one of the more effective deadly sins. To make his point, he introduces three men born to rule, but whose lives produced suffering rather than nobility. Frankly, he is mostly contemptuous of Hamlet and Oedipus. Indeed, it is hard to argue with the way things worked out for them. Still, Dracula seems to get a pass. After all, vampires are all the rage these days.

Clearly comfortable with evil personas, Bill Connington has already made a name for himself in the New York theater world with Zombie, a one person show based on Joyce Carol Oates Jeffrey Dahmer-inspired novella. As Lucifer and his three witnesses, Connington is a disturbing presence, weirdly ingratiating but viscerally menacing. Indeed, Klein’s “choreography” has an appropriately serpentine quality as he creeps, slithers, and shambles across the stage.

Connington’s text posits some intriguing connections between the four brooding figures from literature (of course counting Lucifer from his appearance in Milton). Yet somehow though, the parallels break down with Stoker’s Dracula. Perhaps, that is because he never had a comparable epic fall from grace.

Frankly, the creepiest aspect of Darkness might be Sean Gill’s unsettling audio effects and Connington's reverberating voice-over narration. Even though the audience safely in the New City, the Don-Pardo-from-Hell effect could be mistaken for some weird Brooklyn warehouse happening. The production’s big sound might even have become taxing, if it were not a manageable estimated fifty-five minutes.

Darkness is the sort of intimate but ironic genre theater Klein has a real touch for. Though it is a work heavy on text and narration, she keeps it chugging along briskly. In fact, it is a surprisingly intense theatrical experience, despite its brevity. Now open, it runs at the New City through Saturday (8/14).

(Photo: Beau Allulli)

Planet Connections: Hound

In Arthur Conan Doyle’s stories, Sherlock Holmes is always well served by his famous mantra: “Once you eliminate the impossible, whatever remains, no matter how improbable, must be the truth.” Yet a grieving Dr. Watson might not want to eliminate the impossible in Hound, John Patrick Bray’s revision of the Hound of the Baskervilles, now playing at the Robert Moss Theater as part of the Planet Connections Theatre Festivity.

Following the outline of Doyle’s original, the eccentric Dr. Mortimer has sought the aid of Sherlock Holmes following the mysterious death of Sir Hugo Baskerville, apparently the result of an ancient family curse. However, the doctor is now a woman with quite a burlesque sense of fashion and a cranial fetish.

The good Dr. Watson is not his usual sidekick self either. As Hound opens, he is in an uncharacteristically metaphysical state of mind, questioning why Holmes, the skeptical rationalist, seemingly rose from the dead after the incident at Reichenbach Falls, while his wife’s death from a prolonged illness is irrevocable. He also seems to have an uncanny Dr. Doolittle ability to talk to dogs, which is going to be useful on this case.

As Holmes, Ryan Knowles (on the night of 6/20) is the embodiment of erudite arrogance. Physically, he brings to mind David Bowie in the role of the famous sleuth, which would actually be pretty good casting. However, this Baskerville case belongs to Dr. Watson, one of the most unfairly belittled characters in mystery fiction. Cavan Hallman fully fleshes him out, conveying his grief, intelligence, and humanity.

Bray’s clever script follows the storyline of Baskerville surprisingly faithfully, yet leads to very different outcomes for its cast of characters at each turn. His philosophical themes are quite intriguing, successfully adding another layer to the familiar Hell Hound tale. While some of the surreal monologues, like those exploring the identity of the largely overlooked housekeeper Mrs. Hudson, take the audience a bit too far out of the story, the strong stage presence of Hound’s Holmes and Watson always reasserts the show’s momentum.

Following her recent production of Go-Go Killers, director Rachel Klein again shows a flair for genre theater, staging Hound in the style of a Victorian vaudeville, complete with title cards for each change of scene, which is not inappropriate to the story. It is an often bizarre but thoughtful take on Baskerville case, which should entertain both casual and diehard Holmes aficionados. Hound runs through Thursday (6/25), with its proceeds going to RAINN (Rape, Abuse & Incest National Network).