Review: CATACLYSM's Outdoor Staging Makes For a Spooky Evening Out

Classic horror movie tropes meet an inclusive, immersive experience in Aberrant Theatre's second annual Ghost Light Anthology production, CATACLYSM. The story follows a group of former campers and their counsellor as they return to their old haunt after a tragic incident. As they're reunited, old tensions and rivalries are rekindled and create a powder keg of an environment-and that's when things start getting weird.

While the story starts with plenty of camp-related drama and exposition, there's never really an explanation for why the area is haunted or cursed, although a quick exchange about the atrocities committed against First Nations peoples seems as good a reason as any. A short runtime of about an hour also means that the action happens pretty quickly and it's hard to get too attached to the characters. The end is extremely open-ended, with no real explanation for what happened or why it did, but it's effective in terms of horror writing; sometimes it's the things that can't be explained that are worse.

The ensemble cast delivers a solid performance all around, especially given the physical demands of the story. The former bully-turned-journalist Sam (Natalia Bushnik) is blunt and confrontational, and Bushnik does a phenomenal job of playing the dimensional role with equal parts humour and terror. Sam's best friend Charlie (Terrah Nitkin) is a nervous stargazer, whose lifelong fear of the campsite makes her the smartest member of the team. Nitkin provides the emotional heart of the story, and it's almost impossible to not laugh at her welcome offhand quips in tense moments. Ocean (Kit Boulter) is the former camper who lives across the lake, and Boulter handles their more frightening scenes with great attention to detail. The tricky subject of childhood trauma stemming into adult anxiety falls on Booker (Andrew Eldridge), but Eldridge's take is sincere and completely likeable.

A big contender in the effectiveness of the storytelling is the setting; director Jordi O'Dael has utilized the outdoor space well, with the audience peering into a single room at the campground. Characters come and go from either direction; one side being through a gate that exits to the quiet street outside, and the other offering a tree-lined dirt path into the darkness. While the action onstage is intriguing, I found myself nervously peering around, always waiting for someone-or something-to slip out of the dark. Lighting (lighting design by Sarah Mansikka) is kept simple, but subtle cues and sharp changes make for a few good jump scares, and the use of LED lights creates more vivid colours.

At its core, CATACLYSM is a fast-paced thriller that could use a bit of slowing down-more time with the characters would allow for a stronger connection to them, and a little more detail on what exactly happens in the story would also give the horror more longevity. Regardless, the unique outdoor setting goes a long way in creating real edge and tension for audience members, and a well-rounded cast offers a broad range of perspectives and actions. Either way, at several points during CATACLYSM I found myself quoting Booker and muttering "don't like that"-and that ability to frighten makes this a great seasonal experience for anyone looking for a scare that's not just another movie or haunted house.

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Aberrant Theatre's CATACLYSM runs on select evenings through October 31 at Majlis Art Garden, 163 Walnut Ave., Toronto, ON.

For more information or to purchase tickets, visit https://www.brownpapertickets.com/event/4381571

Photo credit: Dahlia Katz

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