Watching plays in a cemetery is FUN.
I thought it was going to be creepy, that the stories were going to be so scary that I'd get nightmares. But Wicked Lit has probably seen to many wimps to put on veritably scary plays. Instead, they really focus on the experience itself, on shepherding you through a cemetery, staging each place in a completely different location.
They create these wonderful storyteller characters who are tied to the story they lead you to, but they also interact with one another during moments of intermission between plays, where they performed short Neil Gaiman stories.
One of the storytellers is this young girl whose job is to creep you out by merely staring at you intently or touching you or making you uncomfortable with her proximity and with the fact that she says nothing at all. This, of course, becomes wonderful because your eye is constantly trained on her as you're waiting for the next play, watching intently to see who she creeps out next and how she does it. The Mead actually threw a wrench at her when he asked her to dance with him! She adapted beautifully to the situation, mirroring Brian's movements but not allowing him to touch her, and they had all eyes on them.
The stories improved as the night progressed.
The first story, a Swedish tale, was boring. The play's main character is wonderfully acted, but the script calls for him to argue for a long time with a porter and then with the bishop to let him into a mausoleum to find the sarcophagus of Count Magnus - a legendary evil man. This man is desperately trying to find proof of real evil, as he's been obsessed with it his whole life, so the play is mostly about him arguing to be let inside and approaching the matter with different arguments after they all get struck down.
Eventually, the bishop tells us a tale of the evil Count, and as he tells it, we see a projection in the back wall of the story he's recounting, which is pretty cool. But I found the legends to be inconsistent and not all that evil or scary or particularly intriguing.
Finally, the man sneaks into the mausoleum and finds his very predictable death.
The second story (an English tale) begins at a church, where we find that a town has been struck with a certain plague. A man comes in seeking a representative of the church and finds a nun who happens to be his ex wife. We discover that he left her for another woman, but the woman is a beast and has just tried to feed on their son.
We are led to a graveyard, where the Devil himself reveals to us that the man made a pact with him to wake his first wife from the dead, and in order to stay alive, she needs to feed on human blood and has caused this plague.
I found this play mostly funny, not scary, but more entertaining than the first.
The last play was the best one - an Irish tale about a scary family curse that haunts generations. It's set both at the cemetery and in several indoor rooms, where they do a wonderful job of showing us falling rain.
It's a moral tale, and it's actually the scariest one. At the very end, it leaves us wondering whether the young couple can actually break the curse, or whether the sins of their elders have been passed onto them.
Overall, this was a very entertaining experience, and I'd love to do it again.
I thought it was going to be creepy, that the stories were going to be so scary that I'd get nightmares. But Wicked Lit has probably seen to many wimps to put on veritably scary plays. Instead, they really focus on the experience itself, on shepherding you through a cemetery, staging each place in a completely different location.
They create these wonderful storyteller characters who are tied to the story they lead you to, but they also interact with one another during moments of intermission between plays, where they performed short Neil Gaiman stories.
One of the storytellers is this young girl whose job is to creep you out by merely staring at you intently or touching you or making you uncomfortable with her proximity and with the fact that she says nothing at all. This, of course, becomes wonderful because your eye is constantly trained on her as you're waiting for the next play, watching intently to see who she creeps out next and how she does it. The Mead actually threw a wrench at her when he asked her to dance with him! She adapted beautifully to the situation, mirroring Brian's movements but not allowing him to touch her, and they had all eyes on them.
The stories improved as the night progressed.
The first story, a Swedish tale, was boring. The play's main character is wonderfully acted, but the script calls for him to argue for a long time with a porter and then with the bishop to let him into a mausoleum to find the sarcophagus of Count Magnus - a legendary evil man. This man is desperately trying to find proof of real evil, as he's been obsessed with it his whole life, so the play is mostly about him arguing to be let inside and approaching the matter with different arguments after they all get struck down.
Eventually, the bishop tells us a tale of the evil Count, and as he tells it, we see a projection in the back wall of the story he's recounting, which is pretty cool. But I found the legends to be inconsistent and not all that evil or scary or particularly intriguing.
Finally, the man sneaks into the mausoleum and finds his very predictable death.
The second story (an English tale) begins at a church, where we find that a town has been struck with a certain plague. A man comes in seeking a representative of the church and finds a nun who happens to be his ex wife. We discover that he left her for another woman, but the woman is a beast and has just tried to feed on their son.
We are led to a graveyard, where the Devil himself reveals to us that the man made a pact with him to wake his first wife from the dead, and in order to stay alive, she needs to feed on human blood and has caused this plague.
I found this play mostly funny, not scary, but more entertaining than the first.
The last play was the best one - an Irish tale about a scary family curse that haunts generations. It's set both at the cemetery and in several indoor rooms, where they do a wonderful job of showing us falling rain.
It's a moral tale, and it's actually the scariest one. At the very end, it leaves us wondering whether the young couple can actually break the curse, or whether the sins of their elders have been passed onto them.
Overall, this was a very entertaining experience, and I'd love to do it again.
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