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| Cher Álvarez (Matthew Murphy) |
One of the first Broadway shows I ever saw offered the kind of suspense and thrills that Paranormal Activity aims for. It was Ira Levin's Deathtrap, starring Farley Granger and Marian Seldes, and it might have helped that I was just 11 years old at the time, or that the play was written by a master of the mystery genre. More than 40 years later, Paranormal Activity, now playing at the August Wilson Theatre, has its share of scream-inducing moments, and plenty of technical trickery, but between the scares there's lots of white noise.
Based on the popular horror-film franchise, the play, competently written by Levi Holloway and directed by Felix Barrett, places an attractive American couple in a creaky London house, and soon, things that go bump in the night start to haunt the recently married James (Travis A. Knight) and Lou (Cher Álvarez). Lou's had some mental health issues and is on meds, so she feels the effects of the haunting more profoundly, but the reasons for this ghostly activity become clear when the play delves into their pasts.
Paranormal Activity takes its time doing that over two acts and a two-hour-plus runtime. When the supernatural elements do come, they creep up gradually, effectively punctuated by a loud noise or burst of darkness. It's the time in between that's the problem. James and Lou move around the house, argue, make out, chat via video with James' mother (Shannon Cochran) and receive a visit from a medium (Eva Kaminsky). Except for the latter, it's all very ordinary, and even the seance is only moderately chilling.
Yet the youthful audience around me seemed to be enjoying themselves watching the otherworldly elements unfold live onstage instead of on a screen. And at a time when it's rare to see a one-set new play, Paranormal Activity offers that throwback, something the man its theater is named after, August Wilson, would no doubt approve.
It will be interesting to see if enough theatergoers familiar with the franchise are willing to pay Broadway prices to experience this show's moments of fright with a crowd of likeminded individuals. The much better Stranger Things: The First Shadow (which also has illusions by Chris Fisher) certainly pulled off that feat. As for me, I'll be holding on to my memories of Deathtrap.
