Everything about Hell House is distasteful. Whether it's the snarky company Les Freres Corbusier mocking evangelical Christians, evangelical Christians using theatre to bolster religion, or religion damning gay men to hell, it's all underhandedly self-serving.
Les Freres leaders Aaron Lemon-Strauss and Alex Timbers are staging a hell house in Brooklyn's Dumbo neighborhood, but this evangelical Christian teaching tool is a more familiar scene outside New York and especially in Colorado. It was there among the Rockies where Pastor Keenan Roberts revamped Jerry Falwell's innovative way to shock the Jesus into his wandering flock. Part pageant play, part haunted house, this brand of "theo-theatre" hopes to hold a mirror up to people's sins in order to save them from eternal damnation.
In this secularized version, groups of about 10 audience members shuffle through St. Ann's 14,000-square-foot warehouse space to witness 12 scenes of "sin," ranging from a brutal partial-birth abortion to a gang rape at a club. Despite the Demon Tour Guide's comments (which would make even the Crypt Keeper cringe), there is little humor to be found, even by New York's most holier-than-thou ironists.
Hell House is purposely not campy, but it's also not frightening. The Demon Tour Guide (Brian Levinson on the tour I took) is shabbily costumed in a hooded black robe (by Sidney Shannon) and thick red face paint (by David Withrow). Cap guns for school shootings and painted-on lesions for AIDS patients are silly. The heaving cast of 45 is mediocre, with the one exception of Jeff Biehl as Satan. (His makeup looks great.) Biehl's scene is the culmination of this or any hell house -- the place where we, the audience, could stay for eternity.
It's easier to mock evangelical Christians with one of those Jesus action figures. Want a Halloween fright? Try the Off-Broadway haunted house Nightmare: Face Your Fear. But if the goal is to find incisive theatrical satire, you won't find it in this Hell House.
Presented by Arts at St. Ann's
at St. Ann's Warehouse, 38 Water St., Brooklyn, NYC.
Oct. 10-29. Tue.-Sun., 7:30, 8, 8:15, 8:30, 8:45, 9, 9:15, 9:30, and 9:45 p.m.
(718) 254-8779 or www.ticketweb.com.