Find an event
The Revenants
Future scholars will talk about our era’s zombie drama in the same breath as the Jacobite revenge tragedy or ’40s and ’50s noir. Each highly formalized genre comprises metaphors whose richness varies in direct proportion to their bluntness, speaking to eternal concerns yet tied to the specific cultural anxieties of its time. Barsotti’s new play is more concerned with the psychosexual possibilities of the whole trope. His basic scenario is a breakthrough: The sort-of lead couple is locked in a basement with their precariously harnessed, zombified former significant others.
The Kafkaesque, concrete confrontation of would-be lovers with their cadaverous baggage is a juicy gambit, and Barsotti makes hay at first, deftly unfolding his doomed-romantic trap. But he doesn’t know what to do with it after that, plotwise or metaphorically. He ends up violating most of the rules of zombie-warfare believability, though he’s got all the necessary devices (if only rearranged) for a slam-bang structure on hand. It’s a shame, because between his idea and WildClaw’s sound-lights-makeup execution, this goes much further toward convincing onstage horror (WildClaw’s entire mission) than your typical multimedia stab. Credit the actors—especially Amidei and Hooper, in endless wheezing, slobbering, moaning labor—for making Revenants gripping despite its late-act inertia.
