By J. Scott Hill

I grew up in Chicagoland watching Creature Feature and Son of Svengoolie. American International, Universal, Hammer – these were the brand names of spooky delights, and I loved them so.

And then came the zombie apocalypse.

Night of the Living Dead was not a spooky delight. Night of the Living Dead scared the Night of the Living Shit out of me. George Romero truly horrified me; no film or filmmaker up to that point in my life had ever done that. A well-crafted zombie movie still horrifies me.

Before seeing WildClaw Theatre’s production of The Revenants, my only experience of zombies in live theatre was drinking Zombies at Second City.

The set is a basement workshop. Knowing ahead of time that The Revenants is a zombie-apocalypse story, the sharp tools hang from their pegboard like a blunderbuss over the mantelpiece in a whodunit. A radio quietly chirps out some classic rock (and is cleverly used for the standard pre-show announcements).

Then, POW! It is dark and it is loud. Something catastrophic and local happens amid something catastrophic and widespread. People are swearing at each other, confused. Feeble flashlights illuminate little. Noise and panic fill the theater along with the darkness.

A little light trickles into this basement and reveals two couples. Karen is alive, but her husband, Joe, is a zombie. Gary is alive, but his wife, Molly, is a zombie. The zombies have been tethered like vicious dogs — each of them literally kept on a short leash by their spouse.

At this point, just a few minutes in, I was checking my escape routes in case I had to make a run for it. I did not want to part with even a mouthful of my spicy, delicious brains. As it turned out, I never fled. The excitement at the onset settled into a sort of trapped feeling — not so different from the marriages of the two couples. This relationship metaphor of a zombie — someone going through the motions of life, but perhaps not really living at all — kept on a short leash by their spouse, is the overriding metaphor of the show.

WildClaw Theatre is “dedicated to bringing the world of horror to the stage.” A daunting task, as horror on stage is almost never horrifying. If the spectator were also a participant, like a patron of a haunted house, they might readily scream for their life — but not a theatergoer comfortably seated, program in hand. WildClaw Theatre’s production of The Revenants did not horrify me, but it continually made me think that it could.

The script, by Scott T. Barsotti, containes some frights, some laughs, and even a few revelations; it also containes some long rambling monologues that don’t really go anywhere. The script would benefit from a brutal slashing. Ripping the vitals out of the offal might harvest a taut, scary forty-five minutes.

Director Anne Adams does all she can to keep the energy up. There is lots of nice stage business with the zombies hanging out at the very ends of their tethers, pivoting slowly in unison.

Charlie Athanas’s set design looks like a basement, felt like a basement even though the Angel Island Theatre is up a flight of stairs. There are a few amazing qualities to this normal-looking set, which at one point left me slack-jawed.

The sound in the opening sequence really sets the show’s atmosphere, and continues to enhance throughout. Sound designer/composer Mikhail Fiksel creates a wonderful, horrible soundscape. Just as he did with his excellent recent work on SiNNERMAN Ensemble’s Bible B-Sides, Fiksel’s sound design adds much more to the production than it demands.

The acting is solid all around. Laura Hooper as Molly (zombie) is uncomfortably wide eyed. Ryan Patrick Dolan (living) as Gary is just nervous enough to be ineffectual without being completely panicky.

Karen (living), played by Jenny Strubin, is largely tasked with carrying the show forward. As Karen, Strubin is constantly thinking, weighing, calculating — yet she lets herself be vulnerable. She works out a large chunk of her past, as well as her present.

The transfixing presence in WildClaw Theatre’s The Revenants is Brian Amidei as Karen’s zombie husband, Joe. Amidei also serves as WildClaw Theatre’s Managing Director, and his love and understanding of horror bleeds through his performance. Whenever I thought Joe was an empty puppet shell of a cadaver, Amidei took me the other way. When I thought Joe was a sound mind trapped in an animated yet very dead body, Amidei made me question that. He is guttural and menacing and pitiful and tender and predatory. He manages to make me jump even when I know what is coming. He makes that fist in my stomach clench and twist a little bit.

Blood and gore are used sparingly, but to great effect. Ryan Oliver is the blood jock, and his squibs are some of the best I have ever seen onstage. I hope he gets to handle biological effects for a Chicago staging of Kill Bill someday to really showcase his talents.

I wanted to be horrified by The Revenants, but ultimately I wasn’t. I was startled, grossed out, shocked, afraid, and saddened. This time, WildClaw Theatre was spooky doing everything they could with a bloated corpse of a script, but came across as spooky when horrifying was called for.

2 ½ STARS

(“The Revenants” runs through May 24 at Angel Island Theatre, 731 W. Sheridan. 773-220-1258)

The Revenants production photos by Kirstie Shanley

WildClaw Theatre - Bringing Horror and the Supernatural to the Chicago Stage

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