‘Paranormal Activity’ at ACT is scary good
Cher Álvarez as Lou and Travis A. Knight as James, a couple trying to escape their haunted past in Paranormal Activity at American Conservatory Theater. This original story set in the world of the long-running film series runs through March 15at the Toni Rembe Theater. Photo by Teresa Castracane Photography
Theater isn’t known for being great at horror. I’ve experienced a few jump scares, and theater can do pretty well at conjuring something eerie. But scary? Not so much.
Then along comes Paranormal Activity, a collaboration between regional theaters (including American Conservatory Theater, where it runs through March 22), a film studio and a major commercial producer, to create the hands-down scariest stage experience I’ve had. Theater will never do out-and-out horror as well as movies, which can be literal and fantastical and close-up and expansive all at the same time. But theater is LIVE, and when all the people in the room are there to be manipulated and scared by a spooky story, the willing suspension of disbelief is major, with the added plus of being able to savor the craft of making those scares happen – the sets, the lights, the music, the seemingly impossible happening before your very eyes.
I’m thrilled to report that Paranormal Activity is truly frightening and thrilling in equal measure. It’s an experience unlike any other I’ve had in a theater, and I loved every heart-pounding, chill-inducing minute of it.
Paranormal Activity is part of the film franchise of the same name – seven films and still going – usually involving ghostly mischief, mayhem and possession as captured on security cameras, webcams and the like. The stage version, written by Levi Holloway, can’t do that, so it opts for old-fashioned peeping tom voyeurism. The fantastic set by FlyDavis gives us a cutaway view of a two-story London flat where an American couple are just getting settled.
Cher Álvarez and Travis A. Knight as Lou and James, a couple trying to escape their haunted past in Paranormal Activity. Photo by Teresa Castracane Photography.
The genius of Holloway’s script is how ordinary everything is. Until it isn’t. Lou (Cher Álvarez) and Jimmy (Travis A. Knight) have been married about a year. He’s taken a new job in London and she can work remotely. Something bad went down in Chicago, which spurred the move overseas.
It’s possible that whatever plagued them in the States has followed them, or it’s possible that one or both of them has a slippery grasp of reality.
Álvarez and Knight are great at making everything seem ordinary and surprisingly intimate, with believable swings from giggly romance to intense conversations about communication – the expected newlywed stuff. But there are shadows encroaching, and both Lou and Jimmy are realizing that they don’t know one another nearly as well as they think. Two other cast members, Shannon Cochran and Kate Fry, are equally as skilled, but the less you know about them, the better.
Soon enough, the doors start creaking open and things are literally going bump in the night, but we’re fully invested in this couple and their marriage, which is the perfect place to be when even bigger scares start to roll in.
Cher Álvarez as Lou in Paranormal Activity at American Conservatory Theater. Photo by Kyle Flubacker.
And boy do they roll in. There’s one effect here that is so effective I was shocked, amazed, frightened and delighted. The adrenaline rush was significant, and I thought the show had peaked. But it had not. There is another moment that gave me chills from my toes to the top of my head, and all it involved was one actor uttering a single line. That’s when you know you’re in the hands of masters.
Chief among those masters is illusion designer Chris Fisher, who has worked on other monster-and-magic spectacles like Harry Potter and the Cursed Child and Stranger Things: The First Shadow. Fisher’s work here is so beautifully folded into the narrative of this troubled couple that it feels like something Edward Albee might have crafted if he’d been able to make the horror in his plays literal rather than implied.
And then there’s lighting designer Anna Watson, who can do the simple (like car headlights on the living room walls as they pass outside) and complex (you have to see it to believe it). Same is true of sound designer Gareth Fry, who delivers aural horror in glorious ways that fully deepen and heighten the experience.
Adapting an intellectual property like Paranormal Activity could have been a simple cash grab – a few jump scares and some cheesy dialogue and we’re done. But writer Holloway, who has re-staged director Felix Barrett’s production for this tour, delivers so much more. It’s no wonder that ACT, along with fellow regional heavy hitters LA’s Center Theatre Group, Chicago Shakespeare Theater and DC’s Shakespeare Theatre Company, were eager to be part of this particular Activity – theater at its craftiest, most enticing and, perhaps best of all, most chilling.
FOR MORE INFORMATION
Paranormal Activity continues an extended run through March 22 at American Conservatory Theater’s Toni Rembe Theater, 415 Geary St., San Francisco. Running time: 2 hours (including one intermission). Tickets are $25-$130 (subject to change). Call 415-749-2228 or visit act-sf.org.
