A scene from “The Exorcist” at Open Stage
I wish I could share with you some of my imitations of the hellish noises I heard during “The Exorcist.” I would snarl a demonic throat whisper so chilling it would make your scalp shiver the way mine did. Or I would crack my neck as I tried to spin it all the way around.
But I must leave unsettling sound effects to the professionals. Open Stage ratchets up the tension to create a disturbing and fearful experience that grabs you, possesses you.
William Peter Blatty’s award-winning novel, based on a true story, adapted for the stage by John Pielmeier and directed by Open Stage’s Stuart Landon, “The Exorcist” isn’t just a play to watch. The cast presents the audience with a sensory experience overladen with gore and terror. You smell the air blowing through the rusty casement window. You feel the vibrations from the quaking bed. You sense a presence skulking just offstage, somewhere in the shadows. The stage has an energy around it, like a foggy force-field serving as an imaginary barrier of safety. Then when you hear thunder clap or footsteps behind you, that safety melts away. The special effects surround you, penetrate your sensibilities, make you grab onto the arm of your plus-one for comfort.
In perfect keeping with Open Stage’s “Out of the Darkness” theme for its 38th season comes a story that preys on the blackest parts of the dark arts – in the struggle of good and evil, of things holy and unholy, where children don’t belong. Yet our 12-year-old main character, Regan MacNeil (Emily Reusswig), finds herself shackled to her bed, possessed by a demon that will only leave if he takes someone back to hell with him.
Reusswig delivers an impressive performance that showcases extremes in her range. She gives her voice a pining quality to evoke the audience’s sympathy for a lonely little girl. She swivel-chairs between that helpless and naïve sweetheart to a gnarled, revolting, belligerent beast. Tommy Dougherty plays The Demon, complete with threatening voice and aggressive presence.
Regan’s mother, movie star Chris MacNeil (Tara Herweg), plays a tired single mother who doesn’t believe in God. When her daughter’s soul is overtaken, Herweg transforms her character into a passionate fighter, believing in whatever she has to believe in to save her daughter, bringing the audience along to feel the depth of her desperation.
MacNeil’s director, Burke Dennings (Josh Dorsheimer), provides a touch of comic relief to this play, even adding a few contemporary jokes. The humor isn’t enough to lighten the play overall, but it does add a few smiling moments. Dorsheimer seems to naturally generate chemistry and rapport with the other actors.
Representing the pope, Father Damien Karras (Jeff Luttermoser) and Father Lancaster Merrin (Ted Hanson) both play the main priests exorcising the demonic spirit from Regan. Luttermoser delivers the audience a convincingly tortured and guilty man, shaky in his own beliefs, dealing with grief over his mother’s recent death. In contrast, Hanson’s onstage presence serves as a disruptor to the other characters, carrying a concrete and credible presence. (The feeling zaps me right back to Catholic school when a nun or priest would walk in, and all the students would immediately start behaving. Hanson was in charge.) Both priests say enough Latin and portions of the Mass during the actual exorcism that I feel like I’ve checked my box for the weekly attendance requirement dictated by the Catechism.
I must also praise the evil geniuses who set off every disgust-ometer in downtown Harrisburg with the play’s sinister special effects (Karen Ruch, John Kern, Chris Gibson, Jen Kilander, and Sammi Leigh Melville), frightening lighting design (Tristan Stasiulis), scary sound design (Josh Rhodes), petrifying property design (Becky Arney), and spine-chilling production stage management (Stacy Reck). Together this crew make the setting become its own terrifying character in its own right.
After the house lights come back on, you have to make your way through dim city corridors to find your way home in the dark (unless you attend one of the play’s two matinee showings.)
As with any art form, there’s always the opportunity for artists to offend even the sturdiest of viewers. To honor all that is decent within you, may the power of Christ compel you to leave your minor children at home for this play. And whoever your plus-one is, consider that you have to make eye contact with them at intermission after experiencing some severely lascivious material together. Or you could avert your gaze and spin your head all the way around.
“The Exorcist” runs Oct. 7 to 31 at Open Stage, 25 Court St., Harrisburg. For more information, check their website at https://www.openstagehbg.com/show/exorcist.
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