Room Tone

Created by Elevator Repair Service.
Dir. John Collins and Steve Bodow
With ensemble cast.
P.S. 122

by David Cote

As every child knows, there’s nothing scarier than wandering around an empty house at night. There one faces an architectural analog of the psyche: All those dark hallways, bolted rooms and attics are like forbidden compartments of the mind. Or, no matter how happy one’s childhood, sometimes deserted houses imply domestic violence, the shameful secrets parents hide. In The Blair Witch Project, the only thrills come at the end, when the characters enter a dilapidated house in the middle of the woods where lurks a ghostly child killer. Of course, the mother of all haunted-house flicks is The Shining. Not coincidentally, that Kubrick movie is credited as one influence for Elevator Repair Service’s wonderfully atmospheric Room Tone, the troupe’s riff on religious ecstasy and horror.

For a decade, ERS has produced intelligent, intimate shows that feature a blend of obscure texts, goofy stagecraft, John Collins’s sophisticated sound design and an ensemble of limber performers. Continuing the company’s tradition, but in an excitingly creepy mood,Room uses the narrative skeleton of Henry James’s ghost story The Turn of the Screw and inserts content from James’s brother William’s The Varieties of Religious Experience, a psychological study of people who have had supernatural visions. The result is a haunting collage in which testimonials about divine ecstasy fade into scenes of a paranoid governess (Rinne Groff) guarding her wards against a sinister presence in a country mansion.

The stagecraft is simple but audacious. Seconds after the house lights dim, a man (Charlie Schroeder) begins talking in the dark about his obsessive love for a woman that turned to bitterness. Still speaking in pitch blackness, he moves into the audience area and takes a seat, to the giggling confusion of audience members. Later, sitting in the audience, the man interviews a prospective governess (played by a different actress from the previous one) to take care of his young niece and nephew (Katherine Profeta and Susie Sokol). Many of the scenes take place in an exquisite dimness, with lighting instruments glowing tremulously from the grid before fading out. The sound, likewise, consists at times of a low hum that gets under your skin.

The title of the show refers to the ambient sound in a room, which designers record in order to have white noise for filling in the gaps on a movie soundtrack. It’s a perfect conceit for a show dealing with the invisible presence of ghosts (or God) in everyday life, and the fine line between grace and terror. For children of all ages who love a good tingle on the spine, there’s good news: Halloween will be extended into this week.