Theatre Cedar Rapids offers fun, fear on 2 stages

Creepy, kooky, mysterious and spooky. Words usually ascribed to the Addams Family also perfectly describe what Theatre Cedar Rapids is stirring in its caldron for some Halloween spirit.

“Clue” on the mainstage and “The Woman in Black” in the Grandon Studio are poles apart, but will make for a toothsome twosome from Oct. 12 to 29.

On a scare scale of 1 to 10, with 1 being “Young Frankenstein” and 10 being TCR’s 2019 “Dracula” starring Matthew James, “Clue” director Mic Evans of Cedar Rapids rates his kooky show at a 3, and “Woman in Black” director Patrick Du Laney of Iowa City puts his spooky show at a top-of-the-line 10.

If you go

What: “The Woman in Black”

Where: Grandon Studio, Theatre Cedar Rapids, 102 Third St. SE, Cedar Rapids

When: Oct. 12 to 29; 7:30 p.m. Thursday to Saturday; 2:30 p.m. Sunday; exceptions: 2:30 and 7:30 p.m. Oct. 22, 28 and 29; Oct. 13 is sold out

Tickets: $27 to $35 adults, $15 students; TCR Box Office, (319) 366-8591 or theatrecr.org/event/the-woman-in-black/2023-10-12/

What: “Clue”

Where: Theatre Cedar Rapids auditorium, 102 Third St. SE, Cedar Rapids

When: Oct. 12 to 29; 7:30 p.m. Thursday to Saturday; 2:30 p.m. Sunday

Tickets: $18 to $45; TCR Box Office, (319) 366-8591 or theatrecr.org/event/clue/2023-10-12/

“What I love about it though, is you can celebrate the spooky season in two different ways,” Evans said. “You’ve got the horror, and then the absolute jump-scare that is ‘The Woman in Black,’ and then you can come upstairs and it’s this madcap (comedy).

“It is still tense, it is still a murder mystery and there are moments of campy blood and gore — but it’s all rooted in humor and pointing fingers at each other, which is great,” Evans said, noting “Clue” is appropriate for ages 13 and up.

“Talk about something for everybody at Theatre Cedar Rapids.”

It’s the murder part that makes Evans rate his show at 3 on the scare scale.

“But it’s fun murder,” he said. “No one’s going to necessarily jump-scare you. But there will be moments where the thunder will clap and you might have a little spine tingle.”

He’s working with his sound designer to get the thunder at just “the right decibel” to shake the building “a little bit.”

  Buy Photo

The Woman in Black

Du Laney rated “The Woman in Black” on the same level as the recent “Dracula,” which created one of TCR’s scariest theatrical experiences, also staged in the subterranean Grandon Studio.

“There’s the jump-scare horror, and then there's the creeping dread horror. And this is a creeping dread,” Du Laney said of the ghost story, which debuted in England in 1987.

It’s a play-within-a-play, where Arthur Kipps (Kevin Burford) hires The Actor (Ryan Shellady, in his TCR debut) to help him read aloud a manuscript Kipps has written about an experience he had in the early 20th century. The Actor will play the young Kipps, and the author will portray all the other roles.

Young Kipps is a lawyer from London who is traveling to the northern region to sift through the papers of a recently deceased, reclusive woman who lived in Eel Marsh House, which happens to have a cemetery nearby.

As Kipps meets the townspeople, he hears tales of a ghostly, young woman in black. Those who see her seemed doomed to die.

The time-hopping aspect gives Du Laney, his cast and designers lots of latitude in setting the show. Since they all love the look of England’s Edwardian period, they’re keeping the action to that time right before the outbreak of World War I.

It helps that the story is set in the moors of northern England — the haunting location for many a mystery and creepy tale. They are “entirely disorienting,” Du Laney said.

“When you add the grayness of the ground and the grayness of the sea and the grayness of the sky, all of a sudden it is very difficult to know where you are, apart from the exact place that you’re standing.”

Imagination is a powerful force on stage and in real life, and this script taps into viewers’ imaginations throughout, with lots of “imagine if you will” cues from the narration.

The two men are meeting in an old rehearsal room underneath an old Victorian theater.

“So basically, the set is whatever you might find in an unused rehearsal room, turned into the various locales,” Du Laney said. “And then yes, lighting is going to play a major part.”

He credits scenic designer Lucie Greene with creating an immersive, claustrophobic ambience that will envelop audience members before the show even starts.

“The other major storytelling device is an enormous soundscape in this show,” Du Laney said. “And in many ways, sound is the primary medium for letting us know where we are and what we’re doing throughout the play. Once it starts, it almost never stops, so even with a loud farce going on upstairs, we won’t be too disturbed.”

And if Evans gets his wish to make the building shake during “Clue,” all the better for the show happening simultaneously in the theater’s underbelly.

Ghost stories add an extra chill factor to the times in which we’re living, Du Laney said.

“Especially now that most of us lead such secular lives, regardless of your particular beliefs, or your faith. We get so tunnel visioned into our brain — get up, get to work, do the thing, feed the dog, get the kids to school — the banality of life that happens to all of us, that all of a sudden we’re confronted with ‘other.’ When we are confronted with ‘wonder,’ it really drives us up short,” he said.

“And then you add to the fact that possibility that this ‘other’ or this ‘wonder’ is not friendly, I think it just sends your mind spinning.”

  Buy Photo

Clue

“In the Grandon Studio, you can’t hear what’s happening upstairs in the auditorium,” Evans said. “I’m really interested to see what happens when people get out of their shows and there's some crossover between the horror downstairs in ‘The Woman in Black’ and the people that leave laughing from ‘Clue.’ I'm wondering what the audiences will feel like coming up out of the two different spaces.”

Various versions of “Clue” are swirling in the theatrical realm, but TCR is presenting the non-musical script that’s closest to the 1985 movie that starred Tim Curry, Madeline Kahn, Lesley Ann Warren and other A-list actors.

Evans is directing his own A-list of TCR actors, including John Miersen as Wadsworth, Lauren Galliart as Miss Scarlet, Carrie Pozdol as Mrs. Peacock, Brian Smith as Professor Plum and Greg Smith as Col. Mustard.

The iconic characters from the board game are there, along with the potential murder weapons: a candlestick, dagger, lead pipe, gun, rope and wrench. All items with which “you could bludgeon someone,” Evans said.

The fun comes in trying to figure out whodunnit, with what and where. None of the guests invited to Boddy Manor are good people, so everyone is suspect.

“I keep trying to take this familiar thing, making it brand-new, and giving it a life in a different way,” he said, adding that while most of the cast has seen the movie, he has forbidden them from re-watching it until after their play opens.

When one of the cast members was struggling with playing someone “who was not a good human,” he offered these words of wisdom:

“I was like, ‘Well, then you get to lean into that for the show. Isn't it kind of fun to play someone who’s not the best human being, and yet still give them moments of heroism and doing their best even though they’re not the best?’

“If I didn’t have this cherub face, I would play more villains,” he said.

Even though this is Evans’ first time directing a TCR mainstage show, which he admits is a little intimidating, he’s acted in plenty of them. And as the theater’s education director, he has plenty of tricks in his toolbox to mesh with his veteran actors.

“It’s a home theater for a lot of people, and I’ve worked with a lot of these actors as an actor myself. So knowing their toolbox and my toolbox, we’ve been able to create a really cool collaborative space,” he said. “They’ve been supportive of me, and I think I’ve been able to build a space where I can be like, ‘Hey, I know what you can do, let’s come up with a five different ideas and make something happen.’

“It’s been a lot of fun, and TCR has created a really great space for me, as a young director, to build my skills. … I felt very supported.”

One large task for Evans and his cast involves getting a handle on all the physical humor, so no one gets hurt, and can find things they can do over and over during the run of the show.

“At the end of the day, this show is just fun for fun’s sake,” he said.

He advises audience to “come into our space ready to laugh and ready to enjoy a night of madcap, campy comedy.”

“I haven’t laughed this much in a rehearsal room in a very long time. They’re able to just play on stage,” he said of his cast. “Every show will be different because they’re just playing with one another, and that’s fun, because they’re finding new moments every day.

“I think that these actors getting to just do what they do best is the best thing that Theatre Cedar Rapids offers our community.”

Comments: (319) 368-8508; diana.nollen@thegazette.com