Review: ‘The Thin Place’s’ leads turn Actor’s Express into a haunted house
This story was originally published by ArtsATL.
There is so much terror to be found in the dark, and there is nothing more haunted than a traumatized person.
The best horror stories emerge from these notions, like Shirley Jackson’s "The Haunting of Hill House" or even Mary Shelley’s "Frankenstein." The origins of the omens are largely unexplained, while we experience the stories through the perspectives of damaged human characters.
Playwright Lucas Hnath’s “The Thin Place,” onstage at Actor’s Express through Oct. 26, follows that grand storytelling tradition, as a disturbed woman named Hilda (Bethany Anne Lind) sits in a chair, sips tea and tells the audience of her family’s mysterious past. And, yes, it gets dark and scary in that theater.
Director Freddie Ashley crafts a work that appears minimalistic and straightforward, much of it done in monologues from a set — designed and decorated by technical director Ramey Ward and Nick Battaglia — of two chairs and a table. But there is technical marvel at play. The sound design by Dan Bauman is full of tiny flickers of noise, a zap of an electric charge, ominous hums. The lighting design by Hernando Claros gets the audience accustomed to dark shadows almost from the start. But the atmosphere created is never comfortable.
Hilda begins by telling us about games she used to play with her grandmother, wherein the old woman would try to communicate with her telepathically, just a word or phrase. This happened because eventually the grandmother knew she’d die and she wanted to talk to Hilda from beyond the grave. Hilda’s mother eventually put a stop to this.
But now Hilda is alone, her mother has gone missing and Hilda befriends a colorful British mentalist named Linda (Mary Lynn Owen) to help her reconnect with her family.
Linda is far more loose and brazen in her approach to communicating with the dead — and with the audience — than the reticent, soft-spoken Hilda, yet her stories are just as chilling.
Eventually, the plot settles on a small party of Linda’s friends, Sylvia (Kathleen Wattis Kettrey) and Jerry (Christopher Hampton), who speak a bit uneasily with each other occasionally about who among them might have the scariest story to tell in the dark.
Lind is astounding in her must-see performance as Hilda, evoking elements of Julie Harris in “The Haunting.” She is soft-spoken and frequently silent, yet she never leaves the stage or lets the audience forget that she’s there, even before the show begins. She’s listening to other characters, watching us with haunted eyes, trying to find anyone with whom it’s safe to confide secrets.
Lind and Owen’s abilities as storytellers are top-notch. In a terrific performance as Linda, Owen delivers incredible and showy monologues with many welcome laughs and tension-breaking candor. But often the character Linda is written by Hnath to feel unsafe; her unserious approach to the supernatural does not pay the respect it may deserve. And therein lies the excellent dramatic tension, which Lind and Owen play superbly.
Kettrey and Hampton also add a nice dynamic to the play, their characters creating more awkwardness with Hilda and Linda and making the whole show feel off-putting and unpredictable.
And the more everyone comes to know Hilda, the more unsettling the play becomes.
Among other things, "The Thin Place" is a strong work showcasing the art of good storytelling and stage magic.
During spooky season, though, audiences want to know most if a horror show is scary. And oh, man, "The Thin Place" is scary.
THEATER REVIEW
“The Thin Place”
Through Oct. 26 at Actor’s Express. 7:30 p.m. Wednesdays-Fridays, 8 p.m. Saturdays, 2 p.m. Sundays. Tickets start around $50, with discounts available. 887 W. Marietta St. NW, Ste. J-107, Atlanta. actors-express.com.
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Benjamin Carr is an ArtsATL editor-at-large who has contributed to the publication since 2019 and is a member of the American Theatre Critics Association, the Dramatists Guild, the Atlanta Press Club and the Horror Writers Association. His writing has been featured in podcasts for iHeartMedia, onstage as part of the Samuel French Off-Off Broadway Short Play Festival and online in the Guardian. His debut novel, “Impacted,” was published by the Story Plant.
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