“Play Dead”
Directed by Teller
Geffen Playhouse
4.0 / 5.0 paws
A man in a white suit and blood-red dress shirt asks everyone to turn off their cellphones. After a polite shuffle from the audience, the doors lock shut and the scraping of chains echoes through the theater.
“Good,” says the man, his velveteen voice dropping an octave. “Now you have no way to call for help.”
For the next 75 minutes, the audience sits captive and captivated in the off-Broadway show “Play Dead,” the brain child of Todd Robbins and illusionist Teller, of Penn and Teller fame. The performance is a thrilling macabre mash of illusions, anecdotes and interactive theater.
Robbins plays himself, narrating a series of morose vignettes detailing rumors, from those about the murderer Albert Fish to the ghostly seances of Margery, the renowned Boston medium. His performance is oil slick, and he transitions easily between humor and morbid theatrics.
Robbins resurrects the spirit of the early 20th century Coney Island Circus Sideshow with tales and demonstrations of the bizarre. The stage looks like the basement of an abandoned fun house, littered with dusty boxes, arcade machines and death masks.
It’s a gruesome spectacle in which it’s difficult to distinguish what is true and what is theater. Robbins sets the is-it-real-is-it-not tone when he bites into a light bulb, grinds the glass with his teeth and informs the crowd that he’s eaten over 5,000 bulbs to date.
Robbins picks out audience members to assist him in various illusions, which quickly turn volunteers into victims. Suffice to say, there are plenty of gut-wrenching scenes – both figurative and literal. There are a few predictable moments coated in Jolly Rancher-red blood, but there is also enough real terror and humor to keep the show from being hokey.
The fourth wall is shattered when the theater is plunged into total darkness. The stories the audience laughed at moments earlier suddenly become horrifying in the absence of the theater’s lights. It’s hard not to squirm when something far more substantial than ghost hands brush past – although the true terror comes from not knowing exactly what or who wanders the theater while the audience sits trapped and blind.
But this is the show’s strength, as Robbins gleefully points out, humans feel most alive when they’re scared to death.
“Play Dead” attempts to bring up questions about human reactions to death and how an audience might become complicit in evil. The audience laughs when a volunteer gets murdered but gasps in horror when Robbins threatens to bite the head off a squirming rat. Robbins questions why the audience finds one comic and the other horrifying – but he doesn’t dwell on ethics, for the better.
At times, Robbin tries to be poignant, but the tone of the show doesn’t quite lend itself to serious examination of death and its effect on the living.
It is important to note that audience members are recommended to be over 18 years old. The show contains strobe effects, gore and some nudity. Those who are squeamish or negatively triggered by darkness and unexpected contact should skip this one.
Halloween may be over, but there’s still enough fright to go around. “Play Dead” feels like a trip through a haunted house, with the added terror of being locked in your chair, unable to run. It’s definitely not everyone’s cup of tea. If it was a cup of tea, it would have spiders at the bottom.
“Play Dead” is indulgently gory, hilarious, terrifying and, ultimately, extremely fun – if that’s the sort of fun you’re into.
—Natalie Chudnovsky
Email Chudnovsky at nchudnovsky@media.ucla.edu.