Grace Major (Photo by Zombie Joe’s Underground).
Reviewed by Steven Vargas
Zombie Joe’s Underground Theatre Group
Through June 13
Grace Major descends upon the audience from a tomb standing on a platform. A piano plays the distinctive first descending chord of Chappel Roan’s “Pink Pony Club” as Major dramatizes the lyrics to the crowd. The song, popularized this past year as an LGBTQ anthem, upholds themes of acceptance and community; Roan wrote it after attending a West Hollywood gay club, to capture her feeling of liberation.
Yet even as Major sets the tone of this immersive theater experience with bold choices and numerous pathways for exploring identity, she ventures through none of them.
Slice of Grace, written and performed by Major at Zombie Joe’s Underground Theatre Group, sets viewers down in the middle of a dreamlike confession of murder, then travels through child-like memories to recount the sins that people in her life committed to warrant a death sentence. Using pop culture references to guide the way, Major shares a hollow exploration of agency and power for the sake of a laugh and a feeling of relevance.
Zombie Joe’s is known for its immersive and haunting productions, staged within its multi-room space in North Hollywood. Such productions often require viewers to traverse every corner of the space. This production, however, confines the audience to one primary room. It’s bare, with a few platforms. As Major goes from scene to scene, the audience is instructed to shuffle from one wall to the other — resulting in a monotonous experience that exposes the story’s lack of a sense of place.
This vagueness extends to the overall tone of the work. The dance party-turned-horror opening scene suggests a haunting journey, but what Major presents is a comedic series of events with an over-the-top narrator. She wields her knife with anger, but then jokes about her relationship with the trusty weapon. As she leans into the laughs, there are glimmers of the show’s promise. She grows approachable and quips directly with the audience. It works for a while, until she quickly reverts to screams and dramatic actions when the humor sets in.
These theatrical choices ultimately feel half-hearted — and the narrative suffers. For her first murder, she attacks a creep of a man (played by Michael Silva), testing the waters of a provocative tale of feminist revenge — think Promising Young Woman or Bottoms. She screams as she digs the knife into him. It’s haunting — but then she steps back and repositions herself, composed. She takes a deep breath and screams again. The dramatic tension is released and the comedic aspect of the performance takes over, allowing the framework of feminist revenge to crumble.
Slice of Grace quickly loses its nuance There are strands of various stories but no singular route to link them together. As the piece progresses, Grace the performer only grows more and more elusive, resorting to references from pop culture to guide her forward. For her TikTok recording, she dances to “Pop Muzik” by M and performs the trending dance competition choreography by Molly Long that has resurfaced in the past few months. And in her final moments, she shouts, “I’m a star!” with the same sort of delivery as Mia Goth in Pearl. Each instance manifests with unclear intentions and lacks a connection to the overall story. How do they shape who Grace is in this story?
In the end, Slice of Grace leaves more questions than answers. Following her Pink Pony Club dance party, Major looks up into the sky, fearful. She holds a lantern next to her face as she stands on top of a bed. It’s horrifying, but, as the moment lingers, it begins to feel self-indulgent. It is still unclear who Grace is. What is her narrative? Where is she going? What drives the murders beyond a surface-level treachery? What makes Grace tick? We are promised a slice of Grace, but we barely get a crumb.
Zombie Joe’s Underground Theatre Group, 4850 Lankershim Blvd, North Hollywood. Sat. and Sun., 8 pm and 9:30 pm; thru July 13. http://www.zombiejoes.com/. Running time: 45 minutes with no intermission
