Review: Come Stay In VERONICA'S ROOM if You Dare

Ira Levin was certainly one of the masters of creepiness in books, film, and theatre. Proven in two words? ROSEMARY'S BABY. Three words? THE STEPFORD WIVES. One word? DEATHTRAP. All of those were movies, yes, but DEATHTRAP is one of the most successful theatrical mysteries ever, outside of Dame Agatha. From NO TIME FOR SERGEANTS on, Levin proved regularly that he knew how to write a play.

And then there's VERONICA'S ROOM. Run on Broadway in 1973 at the Booth Theatre, it wasn't precisely a success. It would have done far better on Off-Broadway, this writer thinks, but there were some other issues. This play was staged five years before the better-known DEATHTRAP, and DEATHTRAP is what this play longs to become. Like its better-known younger sister, it runs on twists and turns, false identities and false endings. What its more glamorous younger sister has that it doesn't, however, is a sense of humor; the book for VERONICA'S ROOM is unrelenting, unforgiving, and frankly needs a drink or two to loosen up. When the biggest laugh in a murder mystery comes from dropping one line from MY FAIR LADY during a conversation, the show needs to relax.

But these are weaknesses that beset many shows, and can be overlooked easily in the right circumstances, which the Fulton Theatre and director Marc Robin provide in abundance. The star of this production, which is in itself enough to distract from anything imaginable, is the set by William Mohney. This isn't theatre in the round, it's theatre in the room - the chairs for the audience are set within the bedroom once occupied by the aforementioned Veronica. A seat might be near the room's one door, near the window, near the built-in bookshelves, or one of a dozen other areas around the set.

This requires a degree of detail in the set that's normally not approached by a production; everything must, in fact, be a room and not a less-dimensional facsimile. If an audience member must walk directly past the Victrola to enter or exit, or be sitting only two feet from the desk where Veronica made jewelry, a cheap knock-up or a dusting of gilt and glitter don't work; the audience is on top of everything. The books on the bookshelves are real, and not in perfect order, rather like a real set of shelves of honestly-read books. The closest thing to this sort of experience elsewhere is actual participation in a murder mystery dinner or weekend, where one is in the midst of things once again.

Then there's casting. This claustrophobic little Halloween nightmare requires four people who can handle multiple parts, all of them intense and on-the-edge. Robin's found a cast that can move past the rough edges of the book. The two older characters are played by Susan Cella and Michael Ianucci, who come on stage as an older Irish couple who make do for an elderly woman who's about to die and would like to see her already dead sister Victoria, whom they hope the younger woman present will play for the woman. Ianucci owns the "stage" from the start, but Cella's role increases to fill every available space in the room as she transitions from one part to another. They're quite a remarkable duo, and amazing to watch in every scene. Cella, particularly, works up a masterful on-stage rage that feels genuine even to those sitting only a few feet from her.

The younger characters are played by Andras Lincoln and Havilah Brewster. Both are fine performers, and both attractive, but playing against Ianucci and Cella, they're slightly dominated by the combination of talent and experience wielded by the longer-term actors. Nonetheless, they hold up their ends of the show, which spins in so many directions that it's all right for audience members to wish they had road maps.

The show is originally set in the 1970's, and flashes back, as it were (there are reasons to mediate the flashback comment), to the 1930's; Robin has moved it back to the 1940's and the prior time to just prior to World War One. Although an anachronistic reference or two can be heard, the time shift helps for the most part. Levin intended the show to be contemporary to 1972. But the story line doesn't feel contemporary to the present day, nor does it fit the Seventies as we remember them. Moving it to a setting most know only from history and old movies provides a more haunting feel to it, a more Henry James sort of cloaking that lets one believe that ghosts could pop out of the room's beautiful woodwork. This, along with the unusual but ingenious seating, is Robin's best change to the original show.

The story, which can't really be described without giving away too much, is, for fair warning, extremely unpleasant. Although it's a fine story line for Halloween, it shares a great deal with the sort of Halloween horror movie you'd rather your kids didn't watch. To say that it shares certain themes fairly explicitly with VC Andrews' FLOWERS IN THE ATTIC would be about as close as one could get to putting things politely. If you managed to avoid the literary phenomenon that was that series, the trigger warnings list for this show involves incest, pedophilia, abuse, murder, and a little necrophilia for good measure. And that's all after intermission. The question of insanity, and just whose sanity is in question, starts earlier and never quite stops.

The unique and very beautiful set, the use of time period to create effect (and perhaps to provide enough distance to make the story's themes less unpalatable), and the uniformly excellent cast are great reasons to see this production. But it's not Levin's best work, far from it, and it's still likely to leave you wanting a shower after spending so much time feeling very literally trapped in a room with these particularly noxious characters.

At the Fulton through October 30. Bring a seatbelt - the theatre doesn't provide them, and given the whirlwind you're sitting in, you might feel safer strapped in. Visit thefulton.org for tickets and information.

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