Theater of Cruelty
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(Photo © Casey Kelbaugh)
Taphephobes, nyctophobes, ecclesiophobes, claustrophobes, cryophobes, and bathmophobes beware! Cult-theater director Tim Haskell has designed a haunted house specifically to scare you, even if you don’t realize that you fall into one or more of these categories.
Nightmare is based on the idea of having viewers confront their own phobias. For the most part, the actors go easy with the ooga-booga makeup, and there are no werewolves, vampires, imps, succubae, or demons in attendance. Instead, there are hands being ripped by sharp blades, teeth yanked out of a young girl’s mouth, a fall from a high roof, and other horrific illustrations of death and mutilation. You are your own executioner during the tour as you walk from installation to installation through narrow passages, along rickety surfaces, amidst cobwebs, into a hall of diseased and furry creatures.
It’s not for the faint of heart, pregnant women, or those with a history of epilepsy (a strobe light is used on a couple of occasions). Indeed, when I visited the place, a stocky, six-foot-tall man made his petite girlfriend go ahead of him to assure that the next room was safe. For an extra $5, you can try to find your way through a maze following the tour. It’s worth the extra thrill.
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Sometimes, psychological terror tactics just aren’t as scary as somebody jumping out of a trap door and buzzing a live chainsaw a few feet away from your face. If raw, unadulterated fear is what you’re after, along with a mild heart condition and years of post-trauma therapy, you can’t go wrong with Blood Manor in Chelsea.
All of the classics are here: Skeletons leap out of trash cans as you pass by, a knife-wielding young girl with a zombie-like stride follows you down a narrow passageway, a starving prisoner tries to cut off his shackles with a narrow-toothed handsaw, and so on. Blood Manor even scares the bejesus out of you in 3D: you’re handed those red and blue tinted glasses and then led down a macabre, holographic hallway, pursued by an evil clown in a suit with rotating polka dots!
Whereas people at Nightmare nervously plowed ahead, three of the people who went into Blood Manor behind my girlfriend and me dropped out midway through the tour. We, however, toughed it out. (I plan to demand hazard pay from TheaterMania. ) Anyone seeking to be invigorated by fright will not be disappointed by this experience.
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(Photo © Michel Leroy)
William Shakespeare’s Haunted Pier
Mark Greenfield, the creator of William Shakespeare’s Haunted Pier, has chosen to take the Bard’s characters who died in gruesome ways and present them as restless ghosts who are condemned to be continually revived and then killed again on stages around the world. In an almost Buddhist twist, these spirits grow tired of the never ending cycle of rebirth and violent death, and they resolve to destroy Shakespeare’s ghost in order to stop it.
Greenfield first presented this show at the CSV Cultural Arts Center (where Nightmare is currently playing) and has since moved on to such landmarks as the Belvedere Castle in Central Park, the ship Peking at the South Street Seaport, and its current home: Pier 25, off of the West Side Highway. “We look for places that are multidimensional,” says Greenfield, “places with heights, nooks and crannies that you can slip into, little caverns and coves, a boat that you can board, winding paths. This pier offers all of that.”
The space is larger than an acre, and Greenfield and company are determined to use every inch of it. For example, Romeo kills Tybalt on a giant balcony and then throws the corpse into the water when he’s done. Cleopatra commits suicide in the pier’s breathtaking sculpture garden. Caliban, from The Tempest, leads a rebellion on the deck. And Shakespeare fanatics can surely guess what’s to be found in an installation called “The Dinner Table of Titus Andronicus.” Almost all of the dialogue in the show is taken from Shakespeare’s works, save for a comic theme song that the condemned souls sing repeatedly.
But this experience isn’t only for Bard enthusiasts; Greenfield uses freak show, circus, vaudeville, and street theater techniques to make sure that the haunted pier is accessible to all. (Note to parents: There is a less frightening section of the pier where you can take your kids.) As Greenfield points out: “Shakespeare wrote his plays for King James I and Queen Elizabeth, and he begrudgingly served the groundlings as well. I am interested in the groundlings.”
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Having a Ball
Put on your negligée, then ask for a treat or turn tricks at The Third Annual Masquerade at the Museum of Sex. Thrown by the avant-garde theater company One Year Lease, this party will have you drinking, dancing, snacking, and ogling the exhibits.
Family Matters makes the season safe for kids with its Masquerade Ball for Costumed Dramas, featuring split personalities, outrageous alter egos, and masters of disguise. Laura Peterson Choreography is in charge of the dancing, and Baba Israel spins music in the background.
This year’s Spotlight On Halloween Festival features about 20 theatrical productions with titles like Babies With Rabies, Knife Assassin, Requiem of Adrian Bayle, The Cobra Lady Strikes, and La Contessa’s Halloween Variety Show, as well as an evening of one-act plays. Speaking of one-acts, emerging playwright Crystal Skillman has written The Telling, a new short ghost story that’s set and is performed in the basement of Jimmy’s No. 43 Restaurant in the East Village.
Last but not least, Theater for the New City’s Village Halloween Costume Ball turns 29 this year and will celebrate with a Brazilian jazz pop orchestra, fire eaters, jugglers, story-weavers, stilt dancers, vaudevillians, burlesque dancers, cabaret, and medieval theatrics.
