Lower Cape theater premieres: Family drama, blood-drinkers and a haunted house
Theatergoers have two choices for fall holidays to enjoy with the plays opening this week at Lower Cape theaters. At the Academy Playhouse in Orleans, it's all Halloween with the start of just four performances of the world premiere of local writer Bragan Thomas' "The Vourdalak," based on a long-ago story. And the set turns into the theater's haunted house.
Provincetown Theater is straddling the ideas of Halloween and Thanksgiving with "The Humans," a look at an American family that has spooky elements to it but is set at a gathering of parents and children for a traditional Thanksgiving celebration.
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Plus this weekend, there's an unusual way to see a few local actors, detailed below. See what you're in the mood for:
'The Humans' in Provincetown
David Drake, artistic director at Provincetown Theater, presents an intriguing description of the acclaimed play that’s making its Cape Cod premiere there: “part family drama, part dark comedy, part haunted house” in “a thrilling work of modern American theater.”
Stephen Karam’s “The Humans,” running Oct. 19-30, is the 2016 Tony Award winner for Best Play and a Pulitzer Prize finalist. Drake compares the script in tone to “August: Osage County,” which he also directed there in its area debut.
Performances will be presented at 7 p.m. Wednesdays through Saturdays and 2 p.m. Sundays Oct. 19-30 at the theater, 238 Bradford St.; provincetowntheater.org, 508-487-7487, with updates on Facebook and Instagram.
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“The Humans,” according to theater information, tells the contemporary story of a family moving their Thanksgiving-gathering traditions to a young woman’s new apartment in lower Manhattan’s Chinatown, with her middle-class, middle-aged parents traveling from Scranton, Pennsylvania with their eldest daughter and grandmother to see her new home and meet her new beau. But, “over the course of the evening, deep-rooted fears and emotional uncertainty begin seeping into the proceedings, as well as a strangely supernatural haunting from the building itself.”
The cast of “The Humans” will include Outer Cape actors Nathan Butera, Jadah Carroll, Dian Hamilton and Laura Scribner. Danica Jensen and Ken Lockwood will make their Provincetown Theater debuts in the show.
Watch Cape actors on film
There are some familiar Cape Cod theater names behind and in front of the camera in a short film based on a past local play presentation that’s having its New York City debut this weekend at the Chelsea Film Festival. And Cape Codders can watch the movie virtually Oct. 13-16 as part of a program titled “Women Behind the Lens.”
“The Warning,” part of “Four Plays for a Planet in Peril,” was written and directed by Lee Roscoe and filmed and produced by Janet Murphy Robertson. Starring are local actors Cleo Zani, Karen McPherson, Geof Newton and Roscoe herself. The plot: “As the planet is destroyed by corrupt politicians and corporate kleptocrats, Earth herself intrudes on an election rally to protest and take action.”
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To get a pass to watch: https://filmfestplus.com/. The pass for the entire festival is $25, and viewers can vote for the Audience Award.
'The Vourdalak' and more in Orleans
The stage at the Academy Playhouse in Orleans is doing double duty in this Halloween month, as both the setting for a haunted house and for the world premiere of a haunting play.
The haunted house (see details below) opens Friday, Oct. 14 with timed entrances, offering scares for the stout-hearted and not young children. Then Sunday, Oct. 16 is due to be the opening of "The Vourdalak," described as the re-imagined world premiere adaptation of a little-known Gothic tale by Count Alexis Tolstoy, cousin to the author of "War and Peace."
Thomas’ script was performed in a staged reading as part of one-act nights in March, and his work caught the attention of artistic director Judy Hamer and other Academy of Performing Arts leaders who wanted a full production.
The story, Thomas says, has fascinated him since childhood, and it took him three years and 34 drafts to finish his version.
Tolstoy originally wrote “The Vourdalak” in 1847 in French, though the story wasn’t published until the 1880s, Thomas says. “It concerns the fate of an aristocratic traveler ensnared by a family of deceitful blood drinkers,” he explains. The term “vourdalak” was coined by poet Alexander Pushkin, and means, "wolf-forms," Thomas says, and they “are not your typical risen-from-the-grave vampires. … They are more like revenants, or resurrected Earth spirits, than animated corpses.”
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Thomas is co-directing the show with Academy board member Jonathan Scott Ryder, “whose admiration of Gothic literature matches my own,” Thomas says, and he is also on stage playing captured Lord Nicholas Sommerville.
Thomas says he’s grateful for academy leaders’ support, and Hamer says she’s excited to have the play debut.
“It’s a new take on an old theme and I really enjoyed it,” she says of the March reading. “Bragan is a good writer, especially with dialogue. I’m not a huge fan of horror and gore, and this play stays away from the spectacle of the topic, which I like.”
One of the vampires is also a young person, with two boys sharing the stage role, and Hamer believes that inclusion “lends a creepiness to the tale.”
The creepiness factor is high enough, in fact, to build a haunted house around the show’s gothic set. The premise for those who dare enter that house: “Frightening apparitions have emerged from the shadows while the actors and employees are acting peculiar. Some say the Playhouse has come under some dark spell that is corrupting the very land it resides on.”
The enthusiasm for putting together the scary goings-on may be influenced by a sold-out APA Paranormal Investigation Oct. 1 to try to raise whatever has been causing noises (including a piano playing) and apparitions that have been experienced at the historic building over the years.
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So there’s much going on this month at the academy, and with Thomas, for the Halloween season. “The Vourdalak” has an unusual performance schedule — in part because of the haunted house and in part because Thomas is also playing Dracula in his adaptation of that story at the Chatham Drama Guild for some overlapping time.
“I am flabbergasted that two of my full-length plays are going to be staged at almost the same time by two different theaters!” Thomas said in an email. He said he’s excited to be acting in both shows and, “as a writer, just having this happen to me is one of the most amazing things I have ever experienced.”
Here’s how to enjoy all of what the Academy is offering (information: https://theacademyofperformingarts.thundertix.com/) as well as "Dracula":
► “The Vourdalak” will play at 2 p.m. Sundays Oct. 16 and 23 and 6 p.m. Thursdays Oct. 20 and 27 at the Academy Playhouse, 120 Main St., Orleans; $15.
► The Haunted House will go on there from 6 to 10 p.m. Fridays and Saturdays Oct. 14-28 and 30, plus 8 to 10 p.m. Oct. 29. Groups are due to go through every 10 to 15 minutes and reservations must be made for particular time slots. The scary factor is due to be high, so the event isn’t recommended for small children. Admission: $15.
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► A Haunted House Kid-Friendly Stroll for the younger folk is scheduled to take place at the playhouse starting 4:30-7:30 p.m. Saturday, Oct. 29 as part of the Orleans Halloween Stroll.
► Thomas’ version of “Dracula” with Chatham Drama Guild is due to continue at 7:30 p.m. Thursdays through Saturdays and 4:30 p.m. Sundays through Oct. 16 at the guild theater, 134 Crowell Road; $25 and $20; http://www.chatdramaguild.org/, 508-945-0510. See the Times’ review of “Dracula” at www.capecodtimes.com/entertainment.
Contact Kathi Scrizzi Driscoll at kdriscoll@capecodonline.com. Follow on Twitter: @KathiSDCCT.
This article originally appeared on Cape Cod Times: Cape Cod theater premieres: Family drama, haunted house, vampires
