Margin Notes: The Creeps

 The Creeps

Catherine Waller as Lizardman.
Photo by Andrew Patino

Seen on: Wednesday, 9/06/23.

Plot and Background

Following award-winning runs at Edinburgh Fringe Festival, Hollywood Fringe Festival, and United Solo Festival, Catherine Waller's one person show is now running Off-Broadway. The Creeps, a one-person show created by and starring Catherine Waller, introduces the audience to a seemingly disparate collection of characters, all trapped, but reaching out to the audience for help.

What I Knew Beforehand

I knew that it was probably going to be unnerving, and that some sort of audience participation was involved (reader beware).

Thoughts:

With spidering limbs and a skeletal grin, the hunched over Lizardman (unnamed during the show, but so called in the script) welcomes the audience to the show, as sinister an emcee as Kander and Ebb ever saw. "Pay attention," he warns us, "coz the devil's in the details." We are in a nebulous space, eerily lit with far-echoing sounds. We could be in a basement. We could be in a cabaret. We could be in an abandoned hospital. After setting the ground rules--which include the warning that the audience is encouraged to talk--the Lizardman tours us to the various inhabitants of this space: Bill, the Cockney laborer, hunched over in the boiler room and mourning his daughter; Harley, an expectant mother and exotic dancer, high as a kite and murmuring to her fetus in a husky-honey voice; and Stumpy, an incorrigible child with hacked-off limbs who wants us to laugh at her jokes. The fifth character, the unseen Doctor, has a menacing whistle and a ready scalpel. The Doctor is why they're all here, but he's the last thing they want to talk about.

Catherine Waller, who both created and starred in The Creeps, is a gifted writer and performer. Clad in a black bodysuit with her hair tied back, she slides effortlessly among her roles through physicality and voice alone--no need for costume or wig changes. Indeed, the bare-bones design (no credited scenic or costume designer) allows the audience to fully appreciate Waller's range and dexterity, unencumbered and unobstructed. What design there is, from Scott Monnin's unnerving and precise lighting to Hidenori Nakajo's menacing and inobtrusive sound, serve as the only dressing Waller needs to lure the audience into her world. We hear the staccato drip as we hide in the boiler room with Bill, and the faint echo of club music "upstairs," but we stay caught in Bill's unmoving light. As Harley moves slowly through her chair dance, what could be sensual feels instead voyeuristic, after what we've heard from the others. Her glassy-eyed stare as she scans the audience shifts to sharp dread when she hears the Doctor's whistle, but there is no more escape for her than there is for Stumpy, crouched in a white sheet and shouting profanities at the ceiling when she isn't spouting joyful jokes into the microphone of her mangled hand. Looking at the minimal design, one can tell this is a show easily transported to various festivals, but I don't mean that as as denigration; it shows us just how good theater can be, with the right writer and performer.

I wonder, though, if perhaps the play has the wrong title. As the audience enters the lobby we cross under a mobile of strips of paper asking questions that range from "What do you do for work?" to "Who's your favorite serial killer?" When the audience then enters the amber-lit theater, graying out the colorscape, it sets up expectations (at least it did for me) that we would be seeing a host of villains. And while the Lizardman is a menacing accomplice in the Doctor's evils, what we see for the most part are victims of that evil. These people are neither "the creeps" nor giving us "the creeps." Instead, they inspire compassion and grief in the audience: from Bill bonding with an audience member over having lost someone, to the moan that echoes through the audience at the reveal that Stumpy's hands are missing, to the palpable helplessness when both Harley and Stumpy ask us to save them. The night I attended, one kind audience member kept insisting to a despondent Bill that he doesn't deserve what happened to him or his daughter Sarah, and that he doesn't have to stay here. Waller doesn't want to give her audience the creeps. She wants us to stand together as witnesses and remember to hold empathy for each other. While laborer Bill doesn't see an escape for himself, he still tries to help the audience find ours. "You gotta help each other. You gotta try. Try to be kind. Do your best. Do your best. Be together. Try." He urges us to escape and the lights flicker out until only the red Emergency Exit light is visible, reflecting off the fogged mirrors of the space. A final flicker of orange light, and the candle is snuffed.

***

Running: Now playing at Playhouse 46 at St. Luke's - Opening: September 7, 2023. Closing: November 5, 2023.
Category: solo show
Length: 1 hour, 10 minutes, no intermission.

Creative Team

Created by and Starring: Catherine Waller.
Designers: Scott Monnin (Lighting), Hidenori Nakajo (Sound), Kayleigh Laymon (Production Stage Manager), David Callahan (Production Supervisor), Perry Street Theatricals (General Management), Ursa Creatives (Advertising/Marketing), Katie Rosin/Kampfire PR (Publicist/Marketing Consultant), Ainsley Grace (Asst. Stage Manager).

Catherine Waller as Stumpy.
Photo by Andrew Patino.