Review: LOVECRAFT: NIGHTMARE SUITE at Molotov Theatre Group

Molotov Theatre Group's Lovecraft: Nightmare Suite is a piece of Halloween candy: sweetly frightening but not enough to fill you up. The outline of the script and the excellent technical work promise captivating thrills which the performances never quite deliver.

The evening is constructed of a handful of short horror stories, adapted from H.P Lovecraft's work. The stories are well crafted and show off Lovecraft's natural skill in creating narratives of horror from everyday life. There's no gore here, just a brooding atmosphere, imagined demons, and a dose of irony as characters find themselves in dark predicaments.

The real star of the production is Rachel Wallace's inventive projections and set design. The scenery for each story is mainly created from animated, interactive projections thrown onto a white drop behind the actors. These projections allow actors to throw a log on a fire and see the flames rise, enter into a portal to another dimension, and switch between scenes effortlessly. Relying so completely on projections in theatre is usually either a recipe for disaster or resounding success; happily, Lovecraft: Nightmare Suite is the latter. The white drop is actually composed of several strips of fabric, which are stretched and tied during some stories to create an abstract, haunted castle or the murder weapon of a demon army. It's simple and incredibly effective.

With such a strong technical backbone, it's a shame that the performances and direction do not maintain the gripping atmosphere created by the set. In many ways, this may be the fault of the script, full of Lovecraft's elevated language, and the small space available at the DC Arts Center. The actors of the company do a lot of direct story telling and monologuing, moving very little. While the performances were all solid, it is difficult to hold an audience rapt through a soliloquy, much less an entire script full of them. The Molotov Theatre Group bases their approach around the Grand Guignol theatre style, which rests on melodrama and the surreal which overlays the normal. However, some stories were not very dramatic at all: it's hard to highlight a melodramatic plot when everything is told, not shown. Stories that were told by a single, seated actor were especially uninspiring.

That's not to say that every story fell flat. The tale of a young woman who was treated by a doctor with his own strange malady was quite effective, and maintained movement and mystery throughout by showing the odd doctor only through shadow silhouettes behind a scrim.

Shadows were a recurring theme throughout, as Leigh A. Mumford's lighting design created a suitably eerie feel, augmented by the use of flashlight and lantern props on stage. Gregory Thomas Martin's sound design and music felt lacking to me; sound has the potential to create horror in and of itself, but this production's score felt barely noticeable.

Overall, Lovecraft: Nightmare Suite is an enjoyable introduction to the Halloween season. It's not a perfect piece of theatre, but if you are craving some scary stories, it is enough to wet your whistle.

Lovecraft: Nightmare Suite runs every Thursday, Friday, Saturday, and Sunday through November 8th at the DC Arts Center. Tickets at www.molotovtheatre.org.

Photocredit: Tony Hitchcock Photography

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