“Boo!” sounds different when it’s shouted from a stage rather than seen on a screen or read in a book. A slew of Connecticut theater companies, symphony orchestras and dance, comedy and drag acts have devised spooky entertainments for the long lead-up to Halloween.
This week you can find classical concerts, a play reading, a talent show, a drag brunch and more, all with ghosts, horrors or other elements that go bump on the stage.
“We wanted to do something different,” said Mike Whitham, whose homegrown horror show “Tales from a Darkened Theater” is being staged by Imaginex Productions Oct. 25 at 7 p.m. and Oct. 26 at 3 p.m. at the Hole in the Wall Theater, located at 116 Main St. in New Britain Tickets are $25.
Whitham scripted, directed and is also one of the dozen performers in the show, which is thoroughly original but intended as an homage to Rod Serling, the late Connecticut resident who created and hosted the landmark sci-fi and horror TV series “The Twilight Zone” and “Night Gallery” in the 1960s and ‘70s.
“Tales from a Darkened Theater” may draw inspiration from an expert at TV screenwriting, but Whitham knows live shows and live audiences have their own needs. He’s grounded the play in a live theatrical experience.
“People come in wondering why they were invited to this theater,” Whitham said. “A guy shows up. They have conversations. During those scene we’re in a dark theater with a single spotlight. At Hole in the Wall, there are no windows in the stage area. When it’s dark it’s dark.”
Mike Whitham’s “Tales from a Darkened Theater” has two performances Oct. 25 and 26 at the Hole in the Wall Theater in New Britain. (Imaginex Productions)
Besides different backdrop projections for each story, there are elaborate sets. “We actually built a 24-foot stone bridge for one story. Things happen on that bridge,” Whitham said.
“Tales from a Darkened Theater” consists of four short tales, framed by a fifth story, each of which “ends in a surprise twist,” according to Whitham. “One of the stories is Gothic horror, one is like Alfred Hitchcock, another is science and one is fantasy. The framing story is a creepy mystery that asks ‘Why here, in this theater?’ This is a multimedia production with projections and sound effects.”
Whitham, who grew up in East Hartford from the late ‘50s through the ‘70s and has lived in Coventry since 1985, insists that the nod to Serling’s own twist-heavy style is “real, not just a hook.” He mentions an earlier Imaginex production which acknowledged its debt to the anyone-could-have-dunnit mysteries of Agatha Christie. Whitham has been diligently watching “Twilight Zone” and “Night Gallery” on DVD to get in the right spirit for “Tales from a Darkened Theater.”
Some of the actors in the show’s large cast appear in more than one role or scene. “I hate reusing actors but this time there’s a reason,” he hints. “The sketches take place over four different time periods: the 1940s, the ‘60s, the ‘80s and the present day.”
“Tales from a Darkened Theater” is not the first Halloween-ready show Imaginex has done. Three years ago at Hole in the Wall and elsewhere, the company did “The Night American Panicked,” based on the Mercury Theatre on the Air broadcast of “War of the Worlds” which shocked radio listeners on Oct. 30, 1938.
CT-born scream queen enjoys sinking her teeth into new horror movie roles
Hole in the Wall isn’t the only theater hosting an appropriately creepy and spooky live show this week. Also on tap for those who need a little witchcraft in their stagecraft: A special Halloween-month reading of Connecticut playwright Gina Tracy’s “Witches,” which has supernatural as well as spiritual elements plus monologues from her “Potter’s Wheel” on Oct. 20 at 7 p.m. at the Stamford Palace’s Scripts on Tap series ($23.10; palacestamford.org).
It’s also a particularly good week to catch the season-opening 1920s murder mystery “Rope” at Hartford Stage ($20-$115; hartfordstage.org). Curses and supernatural elements even play a part in the seriocomic 1930s melodrama “Spunk” at Yale Repertory Theatre through Oct. 25 ($15-$65; yalerep.org). On the community theater level, The Town Players of New Canaan is performing Jen Silverman’s historical British witch hunt play “Witch” through Oct. 26 at the Powerhouse Theater in New Canaan’s Waverly Park. ($40, $35 seniors, $25 students; tpnc.org).
On the classical side of things, Hartford Symphony Orchestra is doing one of those concerts where live musicians accompany the screening of a classic movie. The film is “The Nightmare Before Christmas,” and the event is happening in The Bushnell’s vast Mortensen Hall on Oct. 25 at 7:30 p.m. ($49-$129; hartfordsymphony.org).
Local performers and musicians have gone out of their way to create original spooky entertainments for the week before Halloween. Imaginex Productions’ “Tales from a Darkened Room” is just one of the imaginative shows to seek out this week. (Imaginex Productions)
A day later, on Oct. 26 at 3 p.m., the New Britain Symphony Orchestra has a program of mostly Halloween-themed music, including the relentlessly eerie “Hanse Macabre” by Charles-Camille Saint-Saëns, Charles Gounod’s wind-instrument wildness “Funeral March a Marionette,” Modest Mussorgsky’s evocation of a witch’s sabbath “Night on Bald Mountain,” selections from the Andrew Lloyd Webber musical “Phantom of the Opera” sung by young vocalists Lizabeth Miller Kettledon and Tommy Morissette-Corsetti and some soaring John Williams movie score excerpts from the bicycle-flying “E.T.” and the broomstick-propelled Harry Potter films.
The only piece on the New Britain Symphony program that doesn’t fit the Halloween theme is Mozart’s Piano Concert No. 19 performed by 15-year-old prodigy William Swift. The concert, conducted by the symphony’s new music director Toshiyuki Shimada, will be held at Welte Hall on the Central Connecticut State University campus, 1615 Stanley St., New Britain ($28.52, $23.18 seniors; newbritainsymphony.org).
Ballet can be beautiful but also boo-filled. The annual family-friendly Eastern Connecticut Ballet “Spooktacular” has six performances at The Kate, 300 Main St., Old Saybrook, Oct. 25-26 at 11:30 a.m., 1:30 and 3:30 p.m. each day ($16-$24; easternctballet.org).
Spooky comedy includes a “Hocus Pocus Drag Bunch” with drag artists impersonating the witchy Sanderson sisters on Oct. 19 at 2 p.m. at the Funny Bone Comedy Club, 194 Buckland Hills Dr. Suite 1054 in Manchester ($27-$42; hartford.funnybone.com). The cut-ups at Sea Tea Comedy Theater are also improvising an entire horror movie on Oct. 25 at 9 p.m. ($10; seateaimprov.com).
All that, and Halloween still doesn’t happen until Oct. 31 with more horrific events on the way. Stay tuned.
