“Hauntings I Have Lived Through” – Written and Directed by James Wilkinson. Presented by Exiled Theatre at Boston Playwrights’ Theatre, 949 Commonwealth Ave, Boston, through November 19.
by Mike Hoban
Halloween may be over, but that doesn’t mean our love of horror has abated. No, we’re not talking about REAL horrors, like the horrific attack on Israel or the war in Gaza that is now raging, or even Donald Trump’s plans for bringing back early 20th-century European fascism to America if re-elected. The horror we speak of resides where it always does – between our ears, and it’s jolted back to life in Exiled Theatre’s compelling Hauntings I Have Lived Through, now playing at the Boston Playwrights Theatre. Written and directed by Exiled’s co-founder James Wilkinson, Hauntings is three monologues delivered by female narrators, weaving tales from the realm of the supernatural.
The first, The Hanging Tree, is told Moth-style by a 30-something woman (Alex Alexander) who has recently ended a relationship with a boyfriend, although she insists – not altogether convincingly – that the breakup and her supernatural experiences are in no way connected.
In happier times, as he was helping her move into her new home, the boyfriend remarked that the old sycamore tree outside her bedroom window “looked like a hanging tree,” an observation that was not out of the realm of possibility given that the story is set in New England and the home was “built at a time when public hangings were occurring every time a local woman gave a funny look.” Not long after the breakup, a man appears in her bedroom, hanging by a noose from the rafters.
The image, delivered in an almost casual tone by the speaker, produces the same electrical current of dread on the back of one’s scalp as the hanging scene in The Sixth Sense or viewing an old black and white photo of a Klan lynching. After repeated incidents, the woman is now left with a dilemma: how does one validate and then deal with experiences that involve the supernatural?
The second monologue, NORA (all over), is delivered by a millennial (Morganna Becker) to an unseen listener in a two-way conversation, possibly in a café. It’s a clever device, and even though we can’t hear the questions and responses of the other party, the dialogue is crafted in such a way that it’s easy to fill in the blanks.
As she unspools a disturbing tale of a grisly public incident involving a long-lost neighbor that re-appears in her life, the story – fairly horrifying in its own right – becomes almost secondary to the awareness of the darkness that resides in the heart of the narrator herself, punctuated by the painfully unaware (and oddly hilarious) statement, “It’s really a miracle I’m as well-adjusted as I am.”
The final monologue, The Dark Lady Gospels, gives us a slightly older character, a preacher (Laura Crook Waxdal) speaking to what appears to be a cultish group of followers – that she refers to as her “piggies…my spiritual children.” Her flock has assembled in her living/preaching room and it’s obvious that she is in distress. Real life has smashed head-on into her belief system, and her faith has not only left the building, it seems to be openly embracing the other side. Dark Lady is the most ambitious of the three works, but it’s also the least accessible. At times it’s like listening to the rantings of a schizophrenic off her meds, but like those conversations, these are pearls of genuine truth and wisdom folded into the stew of madness. Crook Waxdal fully embraces the desperation and commitment to the character, but it’s easy to get lost in the word salad despite her efforts.
Alexander and Becker also give terrific performances, presenting their stories in an understated manner in contrast to the actual narrative. Wilkinson is especially skilled at this type of casual, seemingly throwaway dialogue that creates dark three-dimensional characters who reveal as much about themselves as they deliver their stories, revealing the evil within. Hauntings is truly haunting, particularly when we see traits of ourselves in these characters. Unfortunately, Hauntings ends its two-week run this weekend (it closes on the 19th with no Friday night performance), so get your tickets at http://www.exiledtheatre.com/current
