Typified in the ’70s and ’80s as the bastion of scrawny, heavy metal-worshipping males, horror over the decades has become a creative genre embraced by fabulous outsider types of all varieties.
Indeed, upon wandering the vendor room at any convention honoring fear-based celluloid, you will find members of the LGBTQ+ family everywhere you look. This is probably unsurprising. Our community, which has so often struggled against hatred and prejudice, has most definitely found commonality in characters like Stephen King’s castigated yet ultimately powerful Carrie White and in all those other frequently misused protagonists who make it to the last frame against all odds.
Seemingly inspired by these creations, it’s been ten years since everybody died. a play about final girls., Open Space Arts’s latest production, finds Maud, Betsy and Allison, three former high school friends who each survived separate serial killer attacks, gathered at a holistic retreat in the woods. But this attempt to repair their fragile psyches soon dissolves into bloody mayhem as old secrets and betrayals are revealed. The fact that another sadistic killer might be stalking them also adds to the emotional frenzy.
A loving celebration of all of the traumatized yet willfully spunky attributes of final girls, the classification given to the victorious heroines of such films as Friday the 13th and The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, playwright Cesario Tirado-Ortiz also seems to take inspiration from Stephen Graham Jones’ exquisite My Heart is a Chainsaw. Jade, the abused and quietly delusional heart of Jones’s book, shares many features with Ortiz’s lovingly articulated personas. Nicely, Ortiz also incorporates non-binary and transgender characters into the mix here, allowing them elevation in a field of storytelling where they are often misrepresented or non-existent.
Thankfully, director Teri Talo takes inspiration from this heightened coverage. They elicit truly committed and often passionately rendered portrayals from their talented cast.
Julia Toney brings stubborn, truly effective layers to Maud, the most noticeably damaged, and possibly most violent, of the survivors. In counterpoint, Alexis Queen brings a soft manipulative quality to Betsy, the seductive former cheerleader. Queen’s twinkling persona ultimately hints to the fact that Betsy might actually have much darker interests than her calm presence indicates.
Noah Hinton meanwhile brings a quiet intensity to every one of Allison’s barbed retorts to Maud, her seeming rival for Betsy’s unparalleled loyalty. Lastly, Alex Marusich hilariously delineates between the two therapists that they play while bringing a calm precision to the remaining, rarely seen member of this damaged group of survivors.
If some of Ortiz’s plot points ultimately don’t land as they should, just as Talo’s direction sometimes lacks the needed rhythmic punch, this is still an original, noteworthy work. Those who love their horror delivered with a bit of progressive, wildly queer energy should definitely find much to rejoice in here, as well.
it’s been ten years since everybody died. a play about final girls runs through April 6th at Open Space Arts, 1411 W. Wilson. More information is available at www.openspacearts.org.