Unbound Productions’ ‘Wicked Lit’ Displays Haunting Ingenuity
by Lexy McAvinchey
Immersive theater gets creepier this month at Mountain View Mausoleum and Cemetery in Altadena, California. The 7th-annual site-specific production “Wicked Lit”, presented by Unbound Productions, consists of four short play adaptations. The first play is adapted from the short story “The System of Doctor Tarr and Professor Fether” by Edgar Allan Poe. Walking in, the audience is greeted by a tennis court theater set outdoors in the 1890’s, with characters caught in a violent social science experiment. The other three plays take place in various locations across the mausoleum and cemetery.
Performed inside the Romanesque, marble halls of the mausoleum is the adaptation of “The Fall of the House of Usher”, another short by Poe. The play has a gothic atmosphere and a Freudian plot. Shame and lust permeate the air. The knowledge that dead bodies are piled inside tombs all around makes the air feel stale, with the characters petrified by their very surroundings.
The scientist Roderick Usher, played by Carlos Larkin, has returned to his childhood home to take care of his sister, Madeline (Tanya Mironowski), but they are both extremely ill, close to death. Enter Nathaniel Dawson (Devon Michaels), Roderick’s research partner, through whom the audience discovers the haunting story that is the Usher family’s nightmare. Larkin’s resonant voice echoes through the marble halls, his words rich with imagery but lacking intent. Michaels’ incessant comic relief takes away from the gravity of the scenario. However, the plot’s slow pace left it bereft of suspense. This piece has the best atmosphere but the cohesive goal in the short play is not fully realized.
Edith Nesbit’s “The Ebony Frame”, adapted by Susannah Myrvold, utilizes a set very different from the first. The two rooms used inside the mausoleum inhabit a warm atmosphere while the space used outside is satanic. The audience is led through the space by a crisp, abrasive Jane (Tina van Berckelaer). The story shows Henry (Joe Fria), a man about to marry his bumbling girlfriend Mildred (Angie Hobin), coming across a portrait of a woman. The woman magically comes out of the painting, saying she is his fiancé from hundreds of years ago. This is where the players struggle the most; the play splits into two atmospheres, but Fria plays the comedy with both his robust, bumbling girlfriend and his romantic, yet satanic fiancé from the past. His choice to carry comedic acting over into the literal satanic wedding, once again, negates the dramatic tension. The special effects at the end are spectacular but don’t make up for the lack of dramatic tension between lover, ex-lover, and their man.
The third piece, “The Grove of Rashomon”, adapted by Jonathan Josephson, follows through a graveyard a mother whose daughter went missing and son-in-law was found dead after a violent samurai attack. She calls back spirits from the dead to find out what happened. The graveyard’s exposure to the elements gives the play an ominous aura with a haunting effect. Relationships are very clear between characters, characterization is bold but defined, and relationships between dominant women and men cause enticing tension. The mother-daughter relationship is emboldened at the end in an emotional scene — the most compelling of the night — where the two are separated for good.
This event presents an exciting use of space and stirring presentations of short stories from the dark side of literature. It’s an important part of the Los Angeles theater community as it employs many actors and designers and offers an extremely unique experience to the Los Angeles audience. Though some of the connections and goals between actors are missing, the ingenuity of the project is extremely alluring in itself.
“Wicked Lit” runs through November 14th at Mountain View Mausoleum and Cemetery (2300 Marengo Ave., Altadena). Tickets are $55–80. For more information, please visit unboundproductions.org.
Contact Contributor Lexy McAvinchey here.
