Playwright: Scott T. Barsotti. At: WildClaw Theatre at Angel Island. Theatre, 735 W. Sheridan. Phone: Web only ( TicketWeb.com ) ; $10-$20. Runs through: May 24
Mmmmmmmmmm. Brains. Forget the backyard barbeque. Nothing says summer like a zombie picnic. And for that, sweet reader, you need look no further than the delightful splatterfest that is Wildclaw Theatre's The Revenants. Directed with a keen eye for bodily fluids by Ann Adams, Scott T. Barsotti's tale of the undead among us also transcends formula schlock. This, my friends, is a story of zombies in love. But we get ahead of ourselves.
The Revenants opens with unnerving scene. It's a mini-masterpiece of unnerving terror created in large part by bone-jarring sound design ( Mikhail Fiksel ) , and ingenious lighting ( Paul Foster. ) Adams has Foster revealing only flashes of what's going on: Split-second apocalyptic images that go by so quickly you can't quite process them ( which makes them all the more disturbing. ) A flash of a distorted, dripping mouth, a festering wound, a body lurching and falling—everything is perfectly timed and perfectly pitched, culminating in screaming Mimi moment that literally shakes the seats.
Our heroes in this horrorfest are Karen ( Jenny Strubin ) and Gary ( Ryan Dolan ) and their spouses, Molly ( Laura Hooper ) and Joe ( Brian Amidei ) . The foursome are holed up in what appears to be an abandoned garage of the sort that draws clueless hapless nubile teenagers in the likes of Hostel or The Hills Have Eyes. ( Kudos to set designer Charlie Athanas for making the place look like Ed Gein's toolshed. )
The two couples have been friends forever but, alas, that friendship is under severe strain thanks to the zombification of Molly and Joe. Barsotti doesn't tell us how this unfortunate occurrence came about. All we know is that the world has become overrun with brain-eating, pus-oozing monsters, and for the purposes of this 80-minute tale, that's all the background we need. Unable to annihilate their spouses ( with a bullet straight through the head, of course, being the only way to kill the undead ) , Gary and Karen have tethered Joe and Molly to the floor while they try to figure out their next move.
Karen, gazing into Joe's eyes, is certain "there's somebody in there" and becomes upset when Gary insists the zombies are brain-dead and cracks up watching them tear into chunks of rotten raw meat. Amidei and Hooper turn in startlingly vibrant performances considering they're playing a couple of corpses. They don't have a line of traditional dialogue, but the phlegmy wheezing and deep-throated gurgling they spew nonstop is varied enough to resemble some sort of grotesque, primitive language. Midway through, we became convinced that in real life, neither Amidei or Hooper is talking for the run of the production. How else could their vocal cords possibly survive the battering they take at every show?
As the tightly paced story winds on ( punctuated by some of the most effectively used blackouts we've ever seen ) , the intriguingly troubled history of this four-way friendship unwinds as the desperation increases. The end, as you might expect, isn't pretty. But it is as perverse a happily-ever-after as you could possibly want from a tale of love among ghouls.