Demonic Housewives

Reviewed by Bill Raden
Archway Studio/Theatre
Through May 1

Demonic Housewives is not the first time that playwright Thomas J. Misuraca and director Sebastian Muñoz have explored the lighter and breezier side of the supernatural. Muñoz’s smart staging of Misuraca’s spectral comedy The Para Abnormals, about a trio of smartphone-wielding ghost hunters, was a surprise hit for Zombie Joe’s Underground Theater’s 2012 season, thanks mostly to the director’s success at embellishing Misuraca’s mix of barn-side broad humor with edges of visual wit and expertly executed haunted-house thrills.

Since then, Muñoz, who had distinguished himself as one of the Zombie Joe stable’s most prolific and adventurous directors, has left the gothic-shock company and re-established himself at NoHo’s Archway Studio/Theatre under his own Force of Nature Productions banner. Demonic Housewives is the company’s debut production.

But where The Para Abnormals excelled in the way that Muñoz animated its insubstantially silly surfaces with skillful and theatrical sleight of hand, too few such opportunities present themselves in the new script. And for a play that — in spite of its intriguing conceit of fielding all-women characters — is little more than a vague reworking of clichés and watered-down plot borrowings from a host of modern-day witches and demons tales, the absence of those fireworks makes for some pedestrian going.

This time Misuraca mines story elements from thrillers like Rosemary’s Baby, The Wicker Man and Evil Dead, along with a favorite Stephen King device of the small town harboring the dark, dark secret. The community in question is Hobbsville which, a prologue informs, is in the grips of a power struggle between good witch Wanda (Lee Quarrie) and the burg’s satanic coven.

But Wanda’s attempts to exorcize the demonic pests fatally backfires, which leads to a funeral presided over by the holy rolling preacher’s wife Millicent (the fine Redetha Deason), her slow-witted sidekick Peggy (Beth Fisher) and a trio of gossipy church ladies (Suzie Heaton, Anne Wescott and Aubrey Manning). All, of course, is not what it seems, and when Wanda’s city niece Darcy (Lara Fisher) arrives with her brazenly butch friend Rae (Caitlin McCormick) to investigate Wanda’s strange death, the stage is set for the inevitable showdown between Darcy and the forces of small-town hypocrisy.

Generally with such material — even in its most parodic presentation — the rule is to not allow the audience to get too far ahead of the story. Mystery and the capacity for surprise are always the lifeblood of the dramatic narrative. But Misuraca’s feints at farce are so wan and formulaic, his generic caricatures so devoid of a sense of inner journey, his plot turns so lacking in conviction, that the audience is fatal furlongs out in front for the entire ride.

Muñoz understands that what he’s staging is essentially a cartoon, and he purposefully directs his likeable ensemble at a Nickelodeon pitch. And the results aren’t without their pleasures: Deason is terrific as the story’s butter-wouldn’t-melt heavy; Muñoz’s conception of the church ladies as a demented Greek chorus is a certified stage coup; and the live musical accompaniment and string sound effects by cellist Jennifer Novak Chun and violinist Elif Savas contribute eerily effective and badly needed ballast.  But it’s all ultimately not enough to salvage Misuraca’s otherwise featherweight, uninspired and laugh-challenged pastiche.

Force of Nature Productions at Archway Studio/Theatre, 10509 Burbank Blvd., NoHo; Thurs., 8 p.m.; Sun., 7 p.m.; through May 1.  (818) 980-7529, archwayla.com. Running time: one hour and 10 minutes.