Post Productions knows that the Halloween season is supposed to be fun.
What happened to spooky tales that delivered a good time with a wink and a nod? We had Scooby Doo as kids. We watched campy, old-school horror schlock on late-night TV and read those EC Comics anthologies that were reprinted for each generation. On Saturday mornings, we watched The Hilarious House of Frightenstein in our pajamas. Well, some of us did.
The point is, there used to be so many options for people who wanted a splash of fright in their entertainment – not too much! Just a little for spine-tingling flavour while we laughed at all the jokes and leaned forward during the exciting parts. Could we create the feeling of ridiculous old horror comics on stage – and bring the Halloween spirit to life in full, glorious, living and breathing colour?
You bet!
Get ready to relive those experiences with two spooktacular stories: Autopsy by Alex Monk, and A Haunting in E Flat by Joey Ouellette. These new, uniquely bizarre, one-act plays won the 2018 Windsor-Essex Playwriting Contest last summer, coincidentally creating an opportunity for a double-bill that’s guaranteed to get people in the mood for Halloween. Each script embodies a different style of comedy and a different way of blending in splashes of drama and creepiness for a fun experience for audiences ages 12 to 95.
Alex Monk’s Autopsy tells the story of Gary (David DuChene), a burned-out coroner who gets the fright of his life when a corpse, John Doe (Joey Wright), returns to life just as the autopsy is about to begin. As Gary struggles to figure out what this means, John helps him deal with the fussiness of his assistant, Michael (Drew Beaudoin), and the frustrations of his boss, Marie-Louise (Rebecca Mickle).
Marking the long-awaited return of David DuChene to a Windsor stage, Autopsy is also the return of his creative partnership with Joey Wright , which delighted patrons for several years at Kordazone. The two have not performed together since Korda’s Doctor Faustus in 2015.
Joey Ouellette’s A Haunting in E Flat is about paranormal investigator Thomas Nett (James Stone) and his psychic niece Charmaine (Carla Gyemi), who face two new clients in a single day: an awkward man, Elliot (Greg Girty) being haunted by his dead mother, and a woman named Nancy (Rebecca Mickle) who hears eerie music in her apartment late at night.
Post Productions and the two playwrights have been waiting for more than a year to bring these plays to frightastic life – but of course everything changes once cast and crew start adding their own creativity into the mix! Thankfully, the incredible cast was firing on all cylinders right out of the gates – committed, naturally funny, with the intelligence necessary to continue finding new laughs, new moments of poignancy, new levels of honesty, and new emotional notes.
As any director knows, talented actors who really care about their craft are what truly brings a great script to life. Or UN-life . . . if you prefer!
The double-bill of Autopsy and A Haunting in E Flat runs Oct 4, 5, 10, 11, 12 at The Shadowbox Theatre. 8:00 PM; doors open 7:30. Tickets $25 at postproductionswindsor.ca or cash at the door while supplies last. Directed by Michael O’Reilly and Fay Lynn. Produced by Michael K. Potter, Fay Lynn, and Michael O’Reilly.
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