In A Dark Dark House
2010
The New Phoenix Theatre Proudly Presents
A Western New York Premiere!
Neal LaBute's
IN A DARK DARK HOUSE
Directed by Joe Natale
Starring Drew Kahn and Richard Lambert
Featuring the original music of Steve Borowski
Directed by Joe Natale
A psychological thriller "SHRINK-WRAPPED IN TENSION'
- NEWSDAY
"The New Phoenix takes us on a dark, dark ride.....A Chinese box of ruses and illusions.....Joe Natale has directed a graceful production with great clarity."
- Anthony Chase, ARTVOICE
"A fine production in the New Phoenix Theatre, featuring two of the more dynamic personalities on local stages, New Phoenix impresario Richard Lambert and Buffalo State College Theater Department Chair Drew Kahn."
- Augustine Warner, ONLINEBUFFALO.COM
Neil LaBute is the frequently controversial champion of off-Broadway and the cinema: he has earned recognition as both a film maker (The Wicker Man, Nurse Betty, Possession) and as a playwright (Fat Pig, The Shape of Things) with an unflinching eye and ear for the dark and complex aspects of the human drama. Newsday said of him: “LaBute takes us to shadowy places we don’t like to talk about, sometimes even to think about…. In the riveting Dark House, [he] spins a tight story almost shrink-wrapped in tension.”
The play pits two estranged brothers against one another in a search for the truth about their shared past: Drew claims that sexual abuse during his boyhood has cost him not only his psychological health but the success the elder Terry has enjoyed. The play turns searchlights into the past as each brother searches not only there but one another, and the audience is left wondering at the complex shadow-play of secrets, guilt, betrayal, desire and anger that form the fabric of families.