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    Review: In ‘Grey House,’ Broadway Gets an Expert Haunting

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    A new play about a sisterhood of sorrows brings something scary to the stage, but is delivering shocks and icks enough?Four strange girls, somewhere between 12 and 200 years old, live in an isolated cabin in the woods. Don’t they always?Marlow (Sophia Anne Caruso) is the alpha, bossing the others around — and also bossing the stranded outsiders, because of course there are stranded outsiders in a play that trades on the tropes of a million horror tales. In “Grey House,” the prime trope is coy creepiness. Of the small knife she occasionally brandishes, Marlow, who gives Wednesday Addams vibes, comfortingly says, “If I put it in your eye, it wouldn’t even hit your brain.”Good to know — and basically true of the play itself.“Grey House,” at the Lyceum Theater, is certainly an in-your-face assault, more in the manner of John Carpenter movies than anything seen onstage since the age of melodrama. It is so expertly assembled from spare parts by the playwright Levi Holloway and the director Joe Mantello that you may not notice, between the jump scares and the shivery pauses, how little it has on its mind. Something about cycles of abuse? The legacy of misogyny? Sure, let’s go with that.But mostly let’s go with the freak-out fun of the four telekinetic weirdos and their den mother, Raleigh, played by Laurie Metcalf in a stringy salt-and-pepper wig that’s almost as frightening as she is. Raleigh is not very maternal; Marlow says she is their mother “sometimes.” Other than feeding them and untangling their tresses as if weeding a garden, she generally leaves them to their own devices.At the start of the play, those devices include some kind of gas-mask contraption that an ethereal deaf girl named Bernie (Millicent Simmonds) is making. (Hint: It’s not a gas mask.) What Squirrel (Colby Kipnes) is making is even worse: a kind of tapestry of innards. (She is presumably called Squirrel because of her tendency to gnaw things like phone cords that if left un-gnawed would short-circuit the plot.)Luckily, the fourth girl, A1656 (Alyssa Emily Marvin), is just making nice. She translates for Bernie and, when the outsiders arrive, calms them with good humor. Explaining her name, she admits that it may be unusual but “it’s no A1655.”The outsiders, a childless couple, need calming because they’ve just wrecked their car on a requisitely dark and snowy mountain road. Max (Tatiana Maslany) was driving; swerving to hit a deer, she hit it anyway. The accident has left Henry (Paul Sparks) with his ankle mangled, or maybe his leg or maybe his soul — it’s a restless manglement, moving through him as the play’s 95 minutes tick by. In any case, Raleigh splints him up, and the girls give him moonshine as an anesthetic.Well, not really moonshine.“Grey House,” which comes to Broadway from Chicago, where it had its world premiere at A Red Orchid Theater in 2019, keeps its secrets as quiet as its shocks are conspicuous. Only gradually do we get any sense of how the marriage of Max and Henry was crashing even before the accident, or why the coven of girls, if not their minder, has such an interest in helping it come apart completely. By the time we do begin to put together a possible explanatory scheme, it’s too late to matter; the trappings of horror, if not any meaningful horror beneath, have scared the bejesus out of the psychological drama.From left, Sophia Anne Caruso, Alyssa Emily Marvin and Millicent Simmonds in “Grey House” at the Lyceum Theater in Manhattan.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesAt least those trappings are superb. Though I’ve left undescribed the two other humans (at least I think they are humans) who fill out the cast, it gives nothing away to discuss the even-more-prominent title character. As designed by Scott Pask and lit by Natasha Katz, and especially as given voice by the sound designer, Tom Gibbons, the house seems to be the repository of feelings and history that everyone else is mostly sidestepping. It moans while they tease.That teasing quality, though sometimes charming — and often, if you are a scaredy-cat, a relief from the hard-core jolts — is the giveaway that “Grey House” should not be taken too seriously, regardless of its allusions to real-world horror of the past and present. (Yes, the Holocaust gets a hat tip.) We know too much about the rules of the genre, how information and staging will be manipulated to scare and delight us, to give much credence to anything deeper. In that way, “Grey House” is like a jukebox musical, squishing familiar arias — gore, ghosts, what have you — into a chic and enjoyable if mostly empty new container.Letting go of meaning in the theater in favor of sensation is a big ask today. The ambition of playwrights to speak directly to our times through emotional naturalism has largely wiped horror, mystery and their ilk from our stages. One of the last such plays to appear on Broadway was an adaptation of Stephen King’s “Misery” in 2015, starring Bruce Willis as an author of mystery novels and, as the psychotic fan who nearly nurses him to death, once again the great Laurie Metcalf.So another thing that has to be said for “Grey House” is that it has given artists who want to explore the opportunities and particular language of an unfashionable form a rare chance to do so. Metcalf and the rest of the cast turn that opportunity into a meal; by investing in its clichés without condescension, they do much to de-cliché them.But what makes the effort meaningful to artists — Holloway began thinking about the story after a family tragedy — may not make it meaningful to us. And though the theater is already a kind of haunted house, filled with odd beings and strange noises, horror may simply work better in a less live medium. When Max and Henry show up at the cabin, unaware that anyone is there, they look around at the spooky surroundings, listen to the wind howling, and somehow find it all so familiar.“I’ve seen this movie,” Henry says. Which is the problem exactly.Grey HouseAt the Lyceum Theater, Manhattan; greyhousebroadway.com. Running time: 1 hour 40 minutes. More

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      Laurie Metcalf to Return to Broadway in a Horror Story, ‘Grey House’

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      The play, directed by Joe Mantello and also starring Tatiana Maslany, had a well-reviewed debut in Chicago. It begins performances in April.Horror films have become a rare bright spot for contemporary Hollywood. Now a group of theater artists is hoping the genre can work on Broadway, too.The producers Tom Kirdahy (“Hadestown”) and Robert Ahrens (“Little Shop of Horrors”) said Tuesday that they are planning to bring an unsettling new play, “Grey House,” to Broadway this spring. The production will reunite the actress Laurie Metcalf and the director Joe Mantello, each of whom has won two Tony Awards. Their most recent collaboration, a revival of “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?,” never made it to opening night because of the coronavirus pandemic.Metcalf, a veteran stage actress also known for her work on television (“Roseanne”) and film (“Lady Bird”), will co-star with Tatiana Maslany (“Orphan Black”) and Paul Sparks (“House of Cards”). This will not be Metcalf’s first scary story on Broadway: In 2015 she starred in a stage production of “Misery,” based on the novel by Stephen King.Also in the cast: Sophia Anne Caruso (“Beetlejuice”) and Millicent Simmonds (“A Quiet Place”).“Grey House,” written by Levi Holloway, is about a couple (Maslany and Sparks) who, after crashing their car during a snowstorm, wind up taking shelter in a cabin occupied by a group of teenage girls and a woman who claims to be their mother (Metcalf). The play had a 2019 production at A Red Orchid Theater in Chicago, where the critic Chris Jones of the Chicago Tribune hailed it as “a savvy, smart, self-aware new play,” and declared that “it just happens to be legitimately terrifying.”The Broadway production, scheduled to begin previews April 29 and to open May 30 at the Lyceum Theater, will not be eligible for this year’s Tony Awards, but instead will be considered part of the 2023-24 season.Holloway, a Florida native who spent much of his career in Chicago and now lives in Los Angeles, has long worked on integrating deaf and hearing performers — he co-founded Neverbird Project, a theater company for deaf and hearing young people — and one of the characters in “Grey House” is deaf. That character will be played by Simmonds, who is deaf.Holloway said in an interview that the first movie he saw was “A Nightmare on Elm Street,” when he was 5 (his father was a horror buff), but that he has mixed feelings about his play being classified in the horror genre.“It’s a word I’m never quite comfortable with,” he said. “I think all good theater is horror. By my estimation horror asks our characters to change, and they must change in order to survive, and that change usually takes the form of the truth. I think that translates to most great stories.”He said the plot of the play “just comes from my nightmares.”“It’s about a lot of things, most of which I don’t know the words for — it’s about love and pain that we carry, and the shelter we build for them both, and about the way we protect the things that hurt us the most, because who are we without our wounds?” he said. “It’s a contemplation on grief and love and how we sometimes feel safe in our pain.” More

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      in Television

      As She-Hulk, Tatiana Maslany Is Beautiful When She’s Angry

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      The “Orphan Black” actor described the giant, green protagonist of “She-Hulk: Attorney at Law” as “weirdly, the closest thing to my own experience I’ve done ever.”She-Hulk was born in 1980, in a comic titled “The Savage She-Hulk.” Endowed with superstrength and a sensational blowout, she stood 6-foot-7 in her bare, green feet and taller in heels. She had biceps like cantaloupes, skin like a cocktail olive, the waist-to-hip ratio of a lingerie model. Could she smash? Could she ever.As the latest Marvel character to bound from page to screen, she makes her television debut in “She-Hulk: Attorney at Law,” a loopy half-hour comedy that arrives on Disney+ on Thursday. The series stars Tatiana Maslany, the Emmy-winning actress best-known for the critics’ darling clone thriller “Orphan Black,” who has also starred in demanding stage roles and a handful of indie films. Maslany described the character She-Hulk — giant, verdant — as “weirdly, the closest thing to my own experience I’ve done ever.”This was on a recent, sultry Wednesday morning, when New York City felt like the inside of a steamer basket. Maslany, 36, who had recently flown in from Los Angeles, where she lives with her husband, the actor Brendan Hines, had suggested walking across the Brooklyn Bridge. She commuted this way just about every day, usually by bike, when she appeared on Broadway in Ivo van Hove’s version of “Network.” The trip calmed her, giving her a channel for her restlessness and intensity, and helped her find her way into a role on the way there and back out on the way home.“The energy that it requires to be open in front of people just is really hard for me to modulate,” she said, as she sidestepped some sun-melted chocolate. “At the same time, it’s quite an alive place to be.”Maslany pulses with that aliveness in person, which manifests in playfulness, attention, intensity. Without the benefit of C.G.I., she stands 15 inches shorter than She-Hulk. She’s a flick knife of a woman — small, sharp. She showed me a tattoo on her arm, a random drawing of an infant that her husband had done.“It’s a little tough baby,” she said approvingly.That morning, she had dressed in yellow cycling shorts and a T-shirt with a picture of a dirt bike on it, and her curly half-blond hair was arranged half up, half down. Kid-sister chic. No one seemed to recognize her on the bridge — a tribute, maybe, to her ability to disappear into character. In “Orphan Black,” she played a dozen clones who were differentiated by hair and makeup, but also by Maslany’s extraordinary plasticity of affect and expression. And while Hollywood sets certain expectations for how actresses should look and behave, she has rarely bowed to them, onscreen or off.“I’ve never played the bombshell,” she said.She-Hulk “fulfills the stereotypical feminine ideal body, while still being, like, too tall and green,” Maslany said.Marvel Studios/Disney+But She-Hulk is a bombshell. She is also the alter ego of Jennifer Walters, a meek public interest attorney with a listless dating life and a passion for workplace separates. When Jen receives an accidental transfusion from her cousin Bruce Banner (Marvel’s original Hulk, played by Mark Ruffalo) she suddenly becomes She-Hulk. While Bruce’s Hulk is a cinder block of a man — or as Maslany put it, “a roided-out gym maniac, to such a cartoonish degree” — Jen’s transformation, triggered by anger, looks different. Only some muscles bulge. Her breasts — not muscles! — bulge, too. Her waist whittles. Her hair straightens.“She fulfills the stereotypical feminine ideal body, while still being, like, too tall and green,” Maslany said. (This was not lost on viewers of the “She-Hulk” trailer, who criticized the character’s voluptuous proportions.)Despite sometimes playing four clones in a single scene, Maslany has never transformed in quite this way. And if she knows she looks good in green, it’s because she once dressed up as a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle at Comic-Con. But she gets what it’s like to have the world suddenly see you differently. And if she doesn’t understand her talent as a superpower, her colleagues do.Explore the Marvel Cinematic UniverseThe popular franchise of superhero films and TV series continues to expand.‘She-Hulk: Attorney at Law’: Tatiana Maslany described the giant, green character making her television debut on Disney+ as “weirdly, the closest thing to my own experience I’ve done ever.”‘Black Panther: Wakanda Forever’: The trailer for the long-awaited sequel was unveiled at Comic-Con International in San Diego. The film will be released on Nov. 11.‘Thor: Love and Thunder’: The fourth “Thor” movie in 11 years, directed by Taika Waititi, embraces wholesale self-parody and is sillier than any of its predecessors.‘Ms. Marvel’: This Disney+ series introduces a new character: Kamala Khan, a Muslim high schooler in Jersey City who is mysteriously granted superpowers.“She has so many superpowers,” said Jessica Gao, who wrote “She-Hulk.”Raised in a medium-size town in Saskatchewan, Maslany was never that interested in fame. “There was, like, absolute flying in the opposite direction, doing everything to not end up there,” she said. She loved acting. She was less enthusiastic about the accouterments of celebrity. At one point I referred to a fashion shoot she had done.“I’m getting better at it,” she said, making a face.“I didn’t want to do anything of that scale ever,” Maslany said of superhero shows. “But there was something about the script that felt really weird and funny.”Amy Harrity for The New York TimesBut she did become reasonably famous. So Jennifer’s resistance to becoming She-Hulk — “The idea of being a superhero is not appealing to me,” Jennifer said — resonated with her. Maslany didn’t have to imagine how she would feel if she became a public figure practically overnight, if she were scrutinized for her appearance and affect.“It’s a very easy jump for me,” she said.On the red carpet and in media appearances, she plays a role to make it through. “It has to be another character, or else it costs me too much,” she said.This helps to explain why an actress who would have sworn that she would never do something as mainstream as a superhero show signed on. “I didn’t want to do anything of that scale ever,” she said. “But there was something about the script that felt really weird and funny in a way that was like, Oh, I don’t know why, but it’s undeniable to me.” (Actually, she did deny it, in at least one interview, but she explained that as a contractual matter: She couldn’t announce it until Disney announced it first.)The move surprised Helen Shaver, a director who worked with Maslany on “Orphan Black.” But it didn’t surprise her for long. “I was like, OK, that’s a wild choice,” Shaver said on a recent call. “But I also know she has this playful, wacky element to her as well. She is willing to abandon herself to madcap humor.”The shoot began in the spring of 2021, in Atlanta. As Jennifer, Maslany played a version of herself, though she noted that she has never worn more makeup to play a supposedly mousy character. (“I’m truly wearing full lashes,” she said. “I’m contoured to hell. The story around Jen being undesirable is absurd.”) And because Jen retains her consciousness even in superhero form, She-Hulk is a version of her, too — though one achieved almost entirely by digital effects.Maslany plays Jennifer Walters, a public interest attorney, as well as her C.G.I.-enhanced alter ego.Chuck Zlotnick/Marvel StudiosWhen She-Hulk appears at her sexiest, Maslany is slinking around the set in a silver motion capture suit and a helmet. “I feel like a little kid in pajamas,” she said.Yet Ginger Gonzaga, who plays Nikki, Jen’s spirited paralegal, could always tell whom she was acting opposite. “When she’s She-Hulk, she has this physicality that instantly changes, and it happens very fast,” Gonzaga said. “It’s a proud stance and a statuesque stance.”Maslany described She-Hulk’s bearing as heavier, less fidgety, more centered in the pelvis. “The weight of She-Hulk brings her down into her loins in a different way,” she said. This might be the way a woman moved if she felt safe in the world, if she knew that no one could hurt her.But “She-Hulk” suggests a further fantasy, one that has nothing to do with irradiated blood and is arguably even more incredible that the sci-fi imaginings of “Orphan Black.” This new show suggests that a woman could be angry, and that the world would really like it.I asked Maslany about the last time she felt angry. “It’s never not there,” she said. But she rarely allows herself to express it in her personal life. And it never looks as good on her — “I would love to be able to be angry, but not, like, shaking and crying,” she said — as it does on She-Hulk.“She transforms into a hyper beautiful, hyper feminine version that might be more palatable in that anger,” Maslany marveled as she stepped off the bridge and into the muddle of Manhattan. “It’s wild. It’s super wild.” More