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Best Halloween show: ‘The Weird’
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
THEATER REVIEW: “The Weird.� Through Oct. 30.
It’s ghoul to the last drop
YOU HAVE TO LOVE a title like “Morning Becomes Olestra,â€? one of the six horror spoofs that make up Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa’s “The Weirdâ€? at Dad’s Garage. Directed with broad comedic strokes by Melissa Foulger and Anne Towns, these one-acts probably won’t creep you out, but they could make you die laughing.
This isn’t Aguirre-Sacasa in the edgy mode of “The Mystery Plays,â€? which got a classy production at New York’s Second Stage earlier this year. Here the author of “Say You Love Satanâ€? and “Weird Comic Book Fantasyâ€? dusts off what appears to be his juvenilia for Dad’s crack comedians. Winking at everything from “Rosemary’s Babyâ€? to “Tales From the Crypt,â€? the show is narrated by Scott Warren as a ghoul whose skin is so blemished that it appears to ooze.
If Wade Tilton is the subtlest actor in the bunch, Sloane Warren is the most outrageous. In the Tennessee Williams riff “Swamp Gothic,â€? she’s compulsive talker Abigail, who has a pet alligator and erotic fantasies about her brother’s love life. In trailer-trashy “Olestra,â€? she plays a wife who hires an assassin to get rid of her chubby hubby (Rene Dellefont in a very funny turn). Also good is Kathleen Wattis, who nails the part of the wacky New Yorker in “The Play about Rosemary’s Baby.â€?
If there’s anything remotely frightening about “The Weird,â€? it is bulldozed by this supremely silly ensemble. This intermissionless evening of one-acts goes down quick and dirty — and gets our vote for best Halloween show.
THE VERDICT: More silly than chilling.
$13; $6.50 students. 8 p.m. Friday-Saturday (Oct. 30). Dad’s Garage Theatre, 280 Elizabeth St. N.E., Inman Park. 404-523-3141, www.dadsgarage.com.
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