Paranormal Activity, Shakespeare Theatre Company
How do we tell a scary story? When I was a little girl in a family that had alrea(dy known too much loss, my cousin made up a genre we called Tiffy stories, featuring the eponymous heroine and trafficking in ghosts and zombies and things unnatural. She'd tell us these stories in the dark by firelight, and we'd watch her pace back and forth, torn between leaning in and shrieking away in fear. Later in life, I started to dabble in the occasional scary movies, which used special effects both practical and computer-assisted, and ratcheted up tension through soundscapes and scores. I learned a little about the ways we've scared each other onstage as well, from the grand guignol of France to my lifelong desire to see someone, anyone, do a Pepper's ghost illusion onstage (I had a chance at Disney's Haunted Mansion but the lobby scared me so much as a 9 year old that my sister had to take me back outside while our parents enjoyed the ride).
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How does Paranormal Activity, itself a franchise in Hollywood of found-footage style demonic horror, tell a story onstage? It first builds an original story in the same mode as the franchise, featuring a young couple (Travis A. Knight and Cher Álvarez, both doing excellent work) trying to make a new start while increasingly haunted by troubles of their past. Levi Holloway's script and recreation of direction by Felix Barrett keeps the action centered on their home, beautifully rendered in Fly Davis's two-level set design. Long periods of comparative normality are built up steadily as the audience waits for the inevitable turn, spurred along by the work of sound designer Gareth Fry. Fry's work in particular is absolutely essential to the production, blaring at uncomfortable volume levels or quietly mounting throughout a scene; I don't think the production would achieve anywhere near its successful spooks without his hand on the scales. Anna Watson's lighting design works hand in hand with Fry, making the audience hyperconscious of what's highlighted and what remains in shadow. Indeed, during one long silent sequence, I heard whimpering from the young lady in the row ahead of me, as she quietly whispered, "...there was a shadow" to her friend in the next seat.
It's remarkable how effective light, shadow, and sound are when combined with actors onstage (as my cousin and every theatrical purveyor of horror has known for centuries), and although there are also a handful of simple, practical effects that appear to great effect and even rounds of applause, they aren't the heroes of the play. Instead, there truly is a communal sense of expectation, brought to a head again and again before being released due to the nature of the script, told in a sequence of scenes that climax, cut to black, and then leave the audience in the dark for a long minute before the curtain rises and breaks the blackout again. It's an effective use of the rhythm of horror, although not all climactic moments hit the same across the span of the evening. As an overall experience, however, Paranormal Activity certainly hits what it's aiming for as a production: timbers are shivered, thrills are chilled, and a lot of people walked out of the theatre grinning in the comedown of the adrenaline spike of a scary story well-told.
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