The Broadway Theatre Review: Grey House

By Ross

As television’s roadrunner beep-beep’s its way into our consciousness, forecasting coyote casualty, trauma, and pain inside the girls’ giggle, the tension hangs overhead like the fleshy insides of the house that heaves and creaks with an insistence that registers as something alive and demanding. Is it sinister or a much-needed required response to an off-balanced gendered power dynamic? Grey House, the new play by Levi Holloway (Haven Place; Pinocchio), plays with our fear and our processing, at least with mine, that forever wants to breathe in the energy within a play’s internal bones. It’s what makes me the theatre junkie that I am, taking on the turmoil as if it is my own, and investing in the outcome completely. Holloway finds the formula, or at least a unique framework, that throws us deep inside the creaking sleeping Grey House that is larger than life and holds more secrets down those stairs than anyone can imagine. Especially for those that somehow find themselves at its door in search of salvation.

The vibe is deliberate, drenched in spooky thriller tactics that forever keep us on the edge, waiting for the jolt that it keeps promising. And when the pack of young girls and one boy scamper up the stairs as if they are trying to avoid a scheduled visit from some non-existent father figure who they don’t want to see followed closely by their seemingly worn out, exhausted mother, those that are seeking shelter show up at the door, as if right on time, banging and barging their way in with the hopes that this house will deliver shelter from the storm and from the trauma that hangs on their every broken ankle move.

But who are these people anyway that live in this house? Are they the family that they first appear to be? Or are they something quite different? It’s a complicated unpacking, that takes over our inquisitive heads from that first banging in the cellar to the moment we ourselves get when we lay down our heads in the safety of our own home. It occupies our mind; this house and its inhabitants, as we almost obsessively try to put together the abstracts into a form we can understand, forever trying to see the big picture even through the thick falling snow outside and the allegories inside. Grey House, for all its complications and cracks, lingers, daring us to try to put the pieces together and make a semblance of its structuring. And derive meaning from its meandering.

The cast of girls is demonically good in their unraveling, giving forth parallels and posturings that intrigue and mystify. Each one is a masterpiece of clever complications, such as the deaf and demanding Bernie, played sharply by Millicent Simmonds (“Quiet Place“), the tight, triggered Squirrel, portrayed intensely by Colby Kipnes (WPPAC’s A Christmas Carol), the curiously constructed A1656, embodied magnificently by Alyssa Emily Marvin (Off-Broadway’s Trevor: The Musical), and, most intriguing of them all, the sharply defined Marlow, played to perfection by Sophia Anne Caruso (Broadway’s Beetlejuice). They form a Crucible union of sorts, floating together like one and the same, but with vastly different protractions, corraled together, casually, by Mama Raleigh, portrayed with the most compelling edge by Laurie Metcalf (Broadway’s Three Tall Women), giving off an energy that shatters norms and expectations within every line delivered. It’s funny and scary, filled with exhausted anger and acceptance. She’s ready for what lies ahead, on so many levels, delivered and packed magnificently in each turn of phrase delivered.

With them all living together in this house in the woods, the pack seems to be waiting for, most passively, the two troubled travelers, Max and Henry, expertly portrayed by Tatiana Maslany (Broadway’s Network) and Paul Sparks (Signature’s At Home at the Zoo), who, by accident (or fate), find themselves seeking shelter against the pain of a broken ankle and a violent snow storm that caused death to a deer and a damaged vehicle, without a friend in sight. They arrive at the unlocked door of this particularly deranged house in the woods, that, as designed most devilishly well by Scott Pask (Broadway’s Shucked), with expert lighting by Natasha Katz (Broadway’s Sweeney Todd), clever costuming by Rudy Mance (Netflix’s “Dahmer“), and a striking sound design by Tom Gibbons (West End’s Good), isn’t exactly the safe haven they might have been hoping for. Or is it an answer to an unsaid, unformed prayer, by someone or something, that lies waiting inside the house, standing right there before us, or crouched and in hiding?

As directed with comical dread and tension by Joe Mantello (Broadway’s Blackbird), the elixir of dread sits sneakily within and above the refrigerator, or outside that tall window at its side, waiting to make us flinch and jump with unease. The scares are few, but the complicated questions begin to pile up in our collective consciousness. Who, or what is that Ancient one, played hypnotically by Cyndi Coyne (Williamstown’s Hot 1 Baltimore), who keeps floating in and engaging? Is she a ghost, as described within the complicated text? Or is she something quite else? And what are we to make of that one young boy, played tenderly by Eamon Patrick O’Connell (“Mother’s Instinct“) who the others keep feeling the need to chase away as if he is the origin of their pain? I’m still not quite sure, but the games that are played by these ‘girls’ with Max bounce around within our heads as much as with Max, who is “already playing” before she even realizes it.

Maslany and the rest of these women, particularly Metcalf and Caruso, find compelling tension inside every action and reaction, slicing off the layers brilliantly as Grey House meanders around a mediation on the pain of unrevenged abuse, torture, and sexual assault. The ideas and design find unfocused realizations inside that house, as the red riddles keep tangling themselves up before our eyes, delivering metaphors and vengeance with captivating care. It falters and drags, as the snow keeps falling outside that door, but the puzzle is ever present, challenging us to peer down into the depth of hurt and hell that resides underneath, perhaps just down those stairs. Is this a purgatory stop, where the injured and abused get to stand up tall to their abusers? Or an operating table for revenge for those who have been hurt at the hands of men looking for love and approval in the innocent?

The questions will ring on and rattle around in your head for hours and days, begging to be unraveled and answered. Some will, but many don’t, as my companion and I talked into the night long after the Lyceum Theatre curtain fell on Grey House. The compelling new play doesn’t frighten as much as it haunts and infuses, demanding curious attention without really giving complete resolution to all that it tries to put forth. I was in it from the get-go, and for hours after. Grey House can feel at moments unsatisfying and bewildering, but the overall descent is worth the tension my body had to endure.