About midway through Unbound Productions’ performance of Wicked Lit, I couldn’t help noticing that although there were hundreds of us in the crowd, only about 30 of us were still alive by this point.
When I heard that Wicked Lit featured plays being performed in a graveyard, I flashed back to those cringeworthy moments of my youth making short films in cemeteries, and thought, “This can go very wrong.” However, it was October, and I’ll try anything once if it involves Halloween. As we entered the venue, I had no way of knowing that I was about to experience my favorite show of a very busy season of haunted attractions.
We were at the Mountain View Mortuary, Cemetery, and Crematory in Altadena, CA. The facility’s ample grounds also include an extensive mausoleum, which pretty much makes it a one-stop shop for dead people. Although the show was scheduled to start at 7:30, we arrived at about 7:15 to find an entertaining pre-show involving a host who was part hypnotist/magician/paranormal investigator and his various assistants already in the process of various shenanigans. This part of the show took place in a courtyard with walls consisting of mostly occupied drawers of the not-so-recently departed. The living crowd was divided into three groups, and each was led to experience a different one-act play before regrouping in the courtyard for more entertainment and subsequent dispatch until each group had seen all three shows.
I could see that logistically this was already a very ambitious production, but I found that it was well-matched by the sophistication of the creative execution. The playwrights of the three pieces bill their work as “adaptations,” but a quick comparison between the source material and the final product suggests that this is perhaps an excessively modest attribution of what appears to be highly original creative work. The three main plays offered a diversity of themes, styles, and settings with minimal overlap making for a very well-rounded and satisfying experience. As a guest, it can be exhausting to mentally shift gears between three different stories in a single evening of entertainment, but each piece was rooted in a familiar spooky trope that made it easy to get your bearings, before these wicked geniuses proceeded to turn the tables on you.
Our first offering was Dracula’s Guest, and we began by walking through the inner halls of the mausoleum that were spookily lit throughout, an impressive feat considering the myriad corridors and stairways through which we passed. The play started in what was probably the most tradtional “set” of the entire evening — a classic three-walled construction of a 19th century inn. We were soon introduced to Jonathan Harker of Dracula fame, and noted the presence of silver bullets and other familiar trappings of nocturnal menaces. But as quickly as they arrived, these ephemeral wisps of familiar milieu were dissipated by the winds of a brisker, edgier narrative. Harker’s archetypal naiveté is warped by a fierce insolence and (dare I say, millennial) sense of entitlement that made me wonder whether he might actually be better off with a couple of fangs in his neck. We were whisked outside the mausoleum to witness Harker’s journey through the Carpathians, before trekking to the final scene in a vast graveyard that was expansively tricked out with dramatic lighting and immersive sound effects. There, we watched a fierce and decidedly risqué encounter between Harker and two of the Count’s comelier devotees, before returning to the courtyard for our next adventure.
Despite its familiar themes and melodramatic flourishes, there was a decided lack of campiness in Dracula’s Guest. The performances struck the perfect balance of not taking themselves too seriously while not taking the easy way out into parody. And just when the tension seemed to be too much to handle for a leisurely weeknight out in the graveyard, the piece ended and we were allowed to decompress with the appropriately themed intermission hijinks in the courtyard. It was a dynamic that would be repeated throughout the night, and it was always effective. During these intermissions, I noticed a unique intimacy and sense of community that permeated the entire show. I even had a chance to chat with some of the producers and learn more about the history of the company.
The second play was The Monk, and it took place in Inquisition-era Venice. In this story, the familiar anchor was that of a Faustian bargain, but with a modern feminist twist. Our heroine was a young woman who, through an unexpected set of circumstances, finds that the pension that has been supporting her studies has been absorbed by the Church. Without this support, as a woman with academic ambitions in 17th century Europe, she finds herself with no option except to join a convent. She enters into a deal with a satanic figure to gain her freedom from society and the Church, but instead of bartering her soul, she must use her powers of seduction to ruin a man of the cloth. The deal itself, and its attendant hooded ghouls and wicked devil, was staged in the mortuary church, a delectably sinful nuance of the production. Finally, we watched the climactic crescendo play out below us in the mausoleum’s beautiful garden from the unique perspective of a balcony.
The third play was Las Lloronas. Whereas the first two plays were clever dramatic narrative retellings, this piece was an impressionistic feast of story, dance, music, multimedia, and a succession of absolute knockout dramatic performances by every single one of the players. The gist of the narrative was the retelling of an Aztec legend in which a native of Tenochtitlan finds herself wed to Cortes, and subsequently driven mad by his betrayal to the point where she murders her children. The four scenes that followed depicted similar vignettes that showed how this tragic pattern repeated itself in successive generations and increasingly familiar and contemporary settings. While each vignette was hosted and narrated by a handsomely demonic figure, the emotional current of the story was conveyed through movement and passionate performances that embody the special power of the theatre. I felt very fortunate that through the luck of the draw, our group saw this piece last. It was definitely my favorite, and in its final moments, it sent the types of chills down my spine that I had been seeking (and not always finding) all month.
I attended quite a few events this Halloween season, and felt that each was satisfying in its own way, but Wicked Lit was definitely my personal favorite. The material was developed and executed with a freshness and a depth that tends to be difficult or impractical for this type of seasonal event. I was particularly struck by the fact that there were no small roles. Every player had a meaningful, challenging part, and I am grateful to them for bringing so much energy and intensity to their performances, especially considering that each actor delivered three performances per night. Special kudos to all of the talented and passionate performers in Las Lloronas.
Unbound Productions is an exciting, passionate, and innovative group, and while I’ll definitely be back for Wicked Lit 2015, I look forward to seeing what they do in the interim!
Follow @thememelab
The Memelab 