Culture Monster's 13 things to do on Halloween

October 29, 2009 |  


7. HAUNTING PLAY
The scariest ghost stories are the ones that never let you decide whether there’s something really spooky going on or whether it’s all in the characters’ heads. Reality’s slipperiness, after all, is a good deal more unnerving than an inexplicable howling in chains. 

Irish playwright Conor McPherson is a contemporary master of what can only be described as the theater of psychological occult. Indeed, he's quickly becoming as adept as Henry James at turning the screw of internal horror.

In “Shining City,” his “modern day ghost story about human contact” now at the Fountain Theatre, he brings together an ex-priest-turned-shrink and a guilt-racked widower who thinks he’s being visited by his late wife. Both men are seeking relief from an unbearable emptiness and both are grappling with whether there’s more to heaven and earth than a lonely rationalism. 
  
The production, directed by Stephen Sachs, struck me as better acted than the play's 2006 Broadway premiere at the Biltmore Theatre. Credit the Fountain’s frighteningly good ensemble, comprised of Morlan Higgins, William Dennis Hurley, Kerrie Blaisdell and Benjamin Keepers, and an intimate space that won't allow you to escape the terror that's afoot in these harrowingly recognizable lives.

--Charles McNulty
  
“Shining City,” Fountain Theatre, 5060 Fountain Ave., Los Angeles. 8 p.m. Thursdays through Saturdays, 2 p.m. Sundays. Ends Dec. 19. (Dark Nov. 26.) $18 to $28. (323) 663-1525. Running time: 1 hour, 40 minutes