By Venus Zarris

Oracle Theatre manages a complete macabre masterpiece in fifteen minutes. Disturbed may not send you into convulsive shock with fear, but you will enter into a nightmare room from hell itself.

The trick here is to tell enough but not too much. Detailing any aspect of such a short performance piece means giving too much away. Suffice to say, you will be quite disturbed.

With basic effects and remarkably conceptualized design, Disturbed renders a dark, otherworldly, psychologically eviscerating atmosphere. The simplicity of execution yields a suffocating visceral reaction. It achieves a lovely grotesque, a breathtaking damnation.

Choreographer Max Truax employs Butoh dance techniques to chilling end. This cast does more with movement than many do with dialogue. Not since this summer’s spellbinding tour from the Nederlands Dans Theater has so much been evoked with unconventional body movement alone.

This dazzlingly designed dreadful dream realizes a stifling nightmare. Tyler Burke’s outstanding Set Design, Eric Van Tassell’s incredible Lighting Design, Mark McCray’s Sound Design and Joan Pritchard’s Costume Design brilliantly unifies this descent into a realm of the beautifully bleak.

From the very start, and when you only have fifteen minutes there’s no time to waste, the look of this production will transport you to a place that you do NOT want to be.

Director Ben Fuchsen compiles a cast of performers that take physicality to a strange and staggering level. Bridget Esterhuizen, Maggie Graham, Zach Livingston, Aileen May, Susan Myburgh, Mike Oleon, Alexandra Shepherd and David Boren manifest the excruciatingly elegant.

Almost as overwhelming as the world that they create is the fact that they do it six times a night, starting at 8pm and repeating every half hour. The thought of this devastating scene playing over and over and over again only reinforces the purgatorial dilemma of these twisted and tortured souls.

Everything is there to create crippling fear but the concept, although truly remarkable, never fully climaxes with the potential impact. You are left feeling almost mercifully relieved that it didn’t plunge just a little further down into the pit. Still, if you’ve got us that close, why not just push us all the way in?

But don’t let my unrequited existential masochism deter you from getting your freak show on. Disturbed is a perfectly eerie appetizer or a dastardly devastating dessert for this haunting season. As a start or end to a night of trick or treating, Oracle’s fourth installment of Disturbed is a beguiling bewilderment of crushing creeps.

3 STARS

(“Disturbed” runs through November 1 at Oracle Theater, 3809 N. Broadway. 773-244-2980.)

Oracle Productions, NFP; at Oracle Theater, 3809 N Broadway, Chicago, IL 60613 - Theatre

One Response to “Disturbed - REVIEW”

  1. 1:37 pm, 23 October, 2009 р.
    Twitter Trackbacks for Disturbed - REVIEW - Chicago Stage Review [chicagostagereview.com] on Topsy.com says:

    [...] Disturbed - REVIEW - Chicago Stage Review http://www.chicagostagereview.com/?p=7432 – view page – cached Oracle Theatre manages a complete macabre masterpiece in fifteen minutes. Disturbed may not send you into convulsive shock with fear, but you will enter into a nightmare room from hell itself. — From the page [...]

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