THE MYSTERY PLAYS
At the McGinn/Cazale Theatre, Broadway and 76th Street; (212) 246-4422.
‘THE Mystery Plays” – two tenuously connected short stage dramas by young and prolific playwright Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa – is like a chilling combination of “Our Town” and the horror/sci-fi of author H.P. Lovecraft, with a dose of Catholicism thrown in.
Kicking off the New Plays Uptown 2004 season at the McGinn-Cazale Theatre, “The Filmmaker’s Journey” is the spookier and, paradoxically, the more humane of the two.
After a banal introduction (“We are all of us on a journey”) by a man dressed as a train conductor and billed as Mister Mystery, we meet two strangers on a train.
One is Joe, a scruffy screenwriter who’s written a film based on Lovecraft. The other is Nathan, a young doctor who turns out to be quite a fan of the famous occult writer. The two flirt and agree to meet in New York.
Then Joe, stepping off the train to buy some beer, wanders off and misses the call for re-boarding. Shortly afterward, he learns that the train has crashed – with total loss of life.
Joe proceeds home to his family for Christmas but is soon visited by an apparition of Nathan, who reveals himself to be vastly different from the pleasant, easygoing traveler Joe met on the train.
It all grows a bit murky, but the play is an intriguing mix of the eerie and the ordinary, the mundane and the macabre.
Under Connie Grappo’s fluid direction, Gavin Creel (Joe) is excellent as an ordinary guy caught up the surreal, while Scott Ferrara (Nathan), at first likable, soon sends chills as a man hiding deep reservoirs of evil.
The second play, “Ghost Children,” involves none of the occult baggage of the first.
Abby, whom we met briefly as Joe’s lawyer in the first play, is flying out to Oregon to visit her jailed brother, Ben, for the first time in 15 years. Ben is doing time for the slaughter of their parents and younger sister.
Should Abby forgive Ben? More importantly, what share of guilt does Abby bear for sending their little sister downstairs on the fatal night?
Despite Heather Mazur’s fine turn as Abby and, especially, Peter Stadlen as Ben, the play comes off as an undramatic meditation on long-ago events we know little – and care less – about.
Aguirre-Sacasa seems a born writer, but he must take the time to find and develop the right tone for the right material.