Horror and the macabre take many forms, and in “Ghosts of the Underground” (playing through this weekend at Zombie Joe’s Underground Theater in North Hollywood) the terrible price of love and revenge is its fascinating shape.
‘Till death do they part: The detective and his murdered wife in “Ghosts of the Underground.”
It’s an immersive show; not fully interactive with the audience, but tantalizingly close. You enter the intimate black-box theater space by passing through the office of a detective obsessed with his wife’s murder, serenaded by a grotesque and eccentric trio of musicians. Soon after, you enter the theater proper, witnessing tableaux that combine dance and mime to wordlessly bring a corrupt and dubious underworld to life. And it’s only then that you enter the strange narrative of the detective’s quest to find a mysterious masked killer, stopping at nothing to hunt down the man he blames for his wife’s death. Written by Adam Neubauer and well directed by Sebastian Munoz, the play brings the audience up close and personal with demons inner and outward.
To tell more about the storyline would be to give too much away, but as with many dream/nightmare narratives, there is a certain amount of subjectivity to all the proceedings. Nothing is exactly what it appears to be, and there are levels to the one-act play that indicate a shadowy allegorical level—a tale told that addresses archetypes, murky, murderous inner life and a deep, pessimistic insanity.
And it’s a musical!
The talented troupe at Zombie Joe’s Underground Theater.
Well, semi-musical, and in the style of Baz Luhrmann’s work, at that. (That is to say, with well-known popular music placed in a new context for good effect.) The entire production is strongly acted, directed and rehearsed, and the design of the show and its players partakes of many creative streams. The attentive theater-goer may see bits and pieces of influences that range from Dickens’ Tale of Two Cities to Weill’s Threepenny Opera, CARNIVAL OF SOULS to Sondheim’s Sweeney Todd. It’s a goulash of everything from Goth to Gypsy to Ren Faire to German Expressionism to New Orleans Mardi Gras to Hair, but put on stage with the usual commitment and energy that we always get from Zombie Joe’s Underground Theater. There’s a lot of good theater in L.A., believe it or not, but ZJUT is a particularly shining beacon of theatrical integrity. They could put up a sign over their door: “We don’t bullshit ourselves and we don’t bullshit you.”
With the recent departure of the well-respected Visceral Company productions in Hollywood, there’s only one year-round theatrical company devoted to exploring the weird, creepy and disturbing: Zombie Joe’s. They always go beyond the average person’s comfort zone, but it’s always rewarding. You still have this coming weekend to see “Ghosts of the Underground” at Zombie Joe’s Underground Theater—so see it.
