Foul-mouthed teens & mysterious moonshine fail to fright in Broadway’s ‘Grey House’
not enter the creepy house occupied by foul-mouthed teenage girls and a fridge full of mysterious moonshine. It will not end well.Such is the demise of Max and Henry in the new Broadway play Grey House, which opened May 30th at the Lyceum Theatre.
Of course, we’ve been down this path before — Jonathan Groff and Ben Aldridge in Knock at the Cabin, James Caan in Misery — but translating hair-raising thrills and chills to the stage is no easy feat.Director Joe Mantello (The Boys in the Band, Wicked) makes the most of Levi Holloway’s confounding script, led by a reliable Laurie Metcalf as the girls’ hot-headed guardian.
The director of ‘Hamilton’ takes a stab at Sondheim’s most terrifying work. And it’s a bloody good time.It’s a heavy winter night in 1977 when Max (Tatiana Maslany)* and Henry (Paul Sparks) find themselves stranded after a car accident.
The two-story home where they seek refuge isn’t your average boarding house. Raleigh (Metcalf) leads the clan, but what she lacks in maternal instinct, she makes up for in sharp-tongued one-liners about the couple’s inevitable fate.Holloway, whose fascination with horror dates back to an early childhood viewing of A Nightmare on Elm Street and Stephen King novels as early reading material, establishes a 1970s-style purgatory that never quite descends into the depths of horror the play’s advertising suggests.Instead, Grey House dabbles in satire as the couple quickly recognizes the absurd creepiness of their situation.
