Playwright: adapted by David Denman. At: Clock Productions at The Old Speakeasy, 4139 N. Broadway. Phone: 773-327-7077; $15. Runs through: Feb. 21
The Old Speakeasy, home to National Pastime Theatre, might be the last place you’d be likely to invite youngsters, but though the shivery tales comprising Clock Productions’ anthology involve copious violence of the Tales-From-the Crypt variety, Jesse Stratton and adapter David Denman’s direction lends its presentation just the right amount of eeew-gross yuckiness to appeal to middle-schoolers (in age, or in heart).
The evening begins with a rainy day, and two Victorian misses first seeking amusement in a book of Celtic myths, one of which recounts the saga of foolish lords quarreling over their shares of a freshly-killed boar, then engaging in speculation on the dangers of infinite time. The damsels are next seen at a party in the company of a handsome young playboy who invites the devil to a Dorian Gray-ish bargain, with similar results. The fourth story describes the grisly fate of a country boy who desecrates a newly dug grave, while the fifth centers on the misfortune of a Nazi soldier who tempts fate, despite the warning of a gypsy clairvoyant. Our final lesson is set in the cheerful world of baseball, where a win-at-all-costs player finds himself the target of a terrible vengeance exacted by the teammates of his latest victim.
Two of these gruesome morality fables are lifted from comic books, another from a familiar campfire yarn, so subtlety is hardly their goal. But any seriously disturbing menace is undercut by the playfully low-budget technical effects—the Halloween-costume beards and horned helmets on the Celtic lords, for example, or the rubber masks denoting villains of evil countenance. Nazi salutes segue into Three Stooges-style slapstick and a decapitation—executed with a hacksaw—yields a fun-house cadaver’s head.
If this Saturday-afternoon-in-the-basement ambience was reflected in the actors’ performances, the results would have emerged as juvenile as their source material, but the six-member ensemble never betrays the integrity of their characters by so much as a wink or snicker. Even during Daniel Pesina’s pitched battles (one with wooden swords, one with umbrellas), our attention remains firmly fixed on the values affirmed by the events. The producers overlooked an opportunity in not including a study guide with the playbill to promote after-show discussions of ethics based on these pop-fiction parables.