Reviewed by Steven Leigh Morris
Force of Nature Productions at the Brickhouse Theatre
Through Sept. 21
RECOMMENDED
What the recent debate between Kamala Harris and Donald Trump unearthed is the logical extension of a divide that’s haunted our nation for the past decade, spurred on by social media algorithms and nefarious politicians aiming to exploit them. The divide, however, is largely contrived. If one pays attention only to social media (and increasingly main-stream media), one might be persuaded that our political spectrum consists of only camps of extremists, that compromise and shared values no longer exist. But, despite the impression created by our swiftly evolving technologies, we know from history that this is probably not true. We’ve come to believe that we’re arguing over alternative realities, but that’s probably not true either. It may be expedient, politically, to divide and try to conquer, but the divide is likely not as true as our media present it.
A 35-minute immersive romp, set in an 1866 Dublin Tavern (The Shady Yew), The Body of Ciara Molloy, stylishly and smartly presented by Force of Nature Productions, invites us into a world of alternative reality, one of Celtic folklore, where spirits and sprites, a banshee, a vampire, and a headless horseman come close to penetrating the veil between the living and the dead. This happens during the season of samhain, which corresponds to All Saints Day, which corresponds to our Halloween. Among the goals of the production is (much like that of an amusement park ride) to scare the crap out of us. We confront murders and other visages of death and yet we emerge alive, into the theater’s parking lot, leaving behind the dead souls pleading to be remembered.
I couldn’t help but think of Christopher Marlowe’s Dr. Faustus, a scientist who couldn’t contain his curiosity to dabble in the world of the occult, a world forbidden to Christian occupants. Marlowe’s Faust sold his soul to enter an alternative world. I couldn’t help but think of how many demons and sprites occupy the worlds of Marlowe’s contemporary, William Shakespeare, in plays ranging from Hamlet, to A Midsummer Night’s Dream to The Tempest, to Macbeth, playing tricks on those enmeshed in royal palaces and their norms of reason in the land of the living.
I couldn’t help but think of that debate, of Donald Trump conjuring a fiction broadcast by his running mate, J.D. Vance, on how Haitian immigrants were eating the pet cats and dogs of residents in Springfield, Ohio, as though the immigrants were demons and goblins, “violent criminals pouring into the country,” conjuring a scene out of Zombie Attack.
The goal there, too, is to scare the crap out of us. But there’s a crucial distinction between the unwritten contract between storyteller and listener, and an outright lie contrived to deceive.
There was a priceless moment in an interview between Vance and journalist Kaitlan Collins, who asked the Ohio Senator why he would continue to perpetrate such a lie, even after Springfield’s city manager had called it nonsense. “The city manager said he didn’t have all the evidence,” Vance protested — a feeble reply considering Collins’ swift, droll retort: “He said he didn’t have any evidence.”
For this “fallen saints tale,” the Brickhouse Theatre has been largely gutted of its normal performance space, in order to provide access to two interior spaces: the bar and the beer cellar, separated by a narrow walkway. The actors play out scenes in both spaces simultaneously, leaving the strolling audience to choose which one they want to observe, and for how long. I saw a police officer (Tom Jones) tell of a body that had just be found, the body of one Ciara Molloy (Cassandra Moselle) who was wheeled in on a dolly, draped in a white sheet. I followed her as she was deposited in the beer cellar (walls lined with brick drapes, while the sound design proffered a soft rumble). She sprang to life, only to puncture the neck of one Deaglán O’Brien (Phillip Wheeler) with her fangs. Meanwhile, in the tavern, other characters were arguing about what happened, and how to stifle the Vampire (persuasively pleading innocence and ignorance of any bloody deed) — perhaps with a Brigid’s Cross and holy water. Meanwhile, in the Cellar, a headless horseman (Kyle Felts) negotiated with O’Brien the terms of his passage to the afterlife.
The rest of the game ensemble includes Redetha Deason, Michael Guthrie-Minty, EmLee VassiLos, Heather Vazquez, Tricia Guthrie-Minty, Gloria Galvan and the company’s founding artistic director Sebastian Muñoz
Visceral evidence of an underworld is what Force of Nature Productions is asking us to consider in its gleefully macabre art of persuasion — scaring and intriguing us not for political gain, but in a mythical, traditional endeavor to have us see and to believe things we might otherwise not see or believe. Sometimes seeing is believing. Sometimes the dead spirits, having once lived, resemble us, or a part of us. These may seem like worlds in opposition, the living and the dead, but there’s room for compromise. Like Democrats and Republicans. Let’s hope.
Force of Nature Productions, Brickhouse Theater, 10950 Peach Grove St., N. Hollywood. Fri.-Sat., 8 pm and 9:15 pm; thru Sept. 21. https://www.tix.com/ticket-sales/fonprods/5227/event/1391589 Running time: 40 minutes.
