TEXT OF REVIEW

In real life, we hate being scared, but in a theatre or on TV, there’s nothing quite like it.  The slow burn of suspense, the shock of horror. Ghosts, demons, and the old cliché, things that go bump in the night.

On television and film, there’s Amityville, The Exorcist, Stranger Things, a long list of Stephen King adaptations, and they date back to the earliest days of the silents.  And CGI makes everything real.

It’s a bit different live on a stage. We suspend our disbelief, but we’re in a community with the actors, we’re seeing effects live as they happen, all with the question, How exactly did they do THAT?

Which is a question asked multiple times in the entertaining if often incoherent and vapid play, Paranormal Activity, now at ACT’s Toni Rembe Theatre through March 22nd.

The curtain rises on a two-tiered set. Downstairs, the kitchen, dining and living room areas, with a staircase that takes us to a bedroom on one side, a bathroom on the other, and a third door to an unseen room.

We’re in England, near London perhaps, A young couple, Louise and James, have recently moved overseas from Chicago.  He has a tight relationship with his mother, with whom his closeness is revealed in the opening moments via a phone call. Mom is religious, he’s now an atheist. Lou seems okay, now that she’s on anti-depressants. She does believe in ghosts, though and we will shortly find out why.

Horror has a long history in theatre, the modern era peaking with The Cat and the Canary in 1927 and Dracula shortly after. Then there’s the old days, Hamlet’s ghost,  and MacBeth’s three witches. More recently, we have Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, and Conor McPherson’s Shining City.

Paranormal Activity exploits all that, switching gears from laughter to horror, from sudden shocks to dawning awareness, augmented by a sound design that soothes, relaxes and suddenly startles. There’s also the chemistry between the very good Cher Alvarez and Travis A. Knight as the young couple, we fear for them, and us.

If one isn’t drawn into the couple’s issues, the slow build can become too slow, and the shocks too infrequent.. But should you buy into it, and can handle the sound and lighting, not to mention the story’s senselessness or massive plot holes. Paranormal Activity is a fun night in the theatre, certainly more fun than the real horrors going on in Washington, Gaza, and elsewhere.

Paranormal Activity plays at ACT’s Toni Rembe Theatre through March 22nd. For more information you can go to act-sf.org. I’m Richard Wolinsky on Bay Area Theatre for KPFA.

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