Add The New York Post on Google Theater review PARANORMAL ACTIVITY Two hours and 10 minutes, with one 15-minute intermission. At the August Wilson Theatre.
Unfortunately they usually aren’t trying to.
So how refreshing and invigorating it is to watch a truly legitimate go at the horror genre onstage in the form of the new play “Paranormal Activity,” which opened Tuesday night at the August Wilson Theatre.
Some of you are probably unshakable and won’t get so much as a rogue goosebump. But, hey, the show certainly freaked me out.
As it did most of the audience. People screamed and jumped in unison just as they would at the cinema. It’s a lot of fun. At times, the spookiness is electric. And, far from creeping into deadly theme-park territory, patrons’ loud vocalizing comes from a rare and intense engagement. They’re riveted.
That’s fantastic. If it’s OK to howl at “Oh, Mary!”, why not shriek at “Paranormal Activity”?
Director Felix Barrett, the man partly responsible for “Sleep No More,” conjures genuine dread as we await the clever terrors that are to come. You may find yourself fixating on the shadowy upstairs bedroom or at the closed bathtub curtain, worried about what demons lurk behind it.
Normally a director would prefer viewers to focus on, well, the actors. But the house by designer Fly Davis, at once modern and rotting, is as much a character as the poor married couple who have just moved in. Just about everything onstage has an ulterior motive. Neither plate nor pillow should ever be fully trusted.
The spouses who don’t know what they’ve got coming are James (Travis A. Knight) and Lou (Cher Álvarez), Americans who’ve moved from Chicago to London for James’ job. Also, it’s gradually revealed, they’re fleeing turbulent pasts.
Then — spoiler alert? — strange occurrences start to go down in the living room and kitchen: lights flicker, a door knock comes from an invisible fist, a window beckons, spooky shadows out of “Peter Pan” wander the walls and more “X-Files” phenomena come to life.
The familiar title is somewhat misleading. While the show is called “Paranormal Activity” and this Broadway outing is definitely a Paramount activity, the play by Levi Holloway is an original story — not a dramatization of any one of the seven films. Therefore nobody is ahead of its shocks and twists.
The effects are mostly tactile and often impressive. One devilish flourish that will get people talking is a move that’s been done before — in a currently running off-Broadway show even — but never so brilliantly. The sound by Gareth Fry has the bass of a motel air conditioner; a music that says “I might die here,” and the dark lights by Anna Watson appear at times to be trying to trap us.
The show doesn’t go overboard with too many illusions, though. It finds its mantra in an opening narration: “Places aren’t haunted — people are.”
Really, it’s the tension here that’s scariest of all. And aside from the creatives, that mood is established by Álvarez and Knight, whose abundant humor and chemistry gave their peril added stakes. They’re far more likable than most horror movie leads are. Knight’s James puts on a macho act to cover his insecurities, while Álvarez Lou goes between earthy and entranced as though she’s hiding a dangerous secret.
That duo, as well as Shannon Cochran as James’ mom Carolanne (some “Poltergeist” humor”), elevate the show like Regan in “The Exorcist.”
Pardon the ghoulishness, but there are a couple quibbles. I would’ve liked to have seen the couple use the second floor more, though perhaps that would water down some later scares. And the character of a spiritual medium and podcaster named Etheline (Eva Kaminsky) breaks the tension at a moment when she should be ratcheting it up. She’s a touch too campy.
Those tiny dings do not take away from the overall impact of what is a welcome gate-crasher of a show.
Because I also review movies, I watch a lot of things that would make my drama critic colleagues’ heads spin 360 degrees. Last week, for instance, I covered the horror movie “Insidious: Out of the Further.” Not exactly Ibsen.
But the best of that popular film genre can do what the theater rarely can, which is have the viewer glued from the start. Frankly, out of paralytic fear of what might happen next. Plays typically need time to rev up. Sometimes, they required a whole act of sedate table setting.
Not “Paranormal Activity.” Barrett and Holloway come the closest I’ve ever seen — outside of a haunted house anyway — to achieving that same always-on-edge sensation onstage.
Thrillers used to be common on Midtown stages. And if horror can be done as well as it is here, fear should be exploited and showcased more. There’s an audience for it. For Broadway, being possessed could prove a blessing.
