Roofies, prostitutes, steak knives, electro funk and the vigorous use of knitting needles to gouge out the eyes of the mentally impaired are what apparently constitute a typical night at the Grand Guignol. And after one such night of extravagant blood-and-gore glamour, suffice it to say that strawberry syrup will never look the same again. Ever.
“Blood Box: An Evening of Grand Guignol,” directed by Matt Cornish DRA ’09, is a re-creation of three of the classic nineteenth century thrillers that originally played at the Theatre du Grand Guignol, a small Parisian playhouse infamous for its twisted “Naturalist” dramas. Translated by Rebecca Phillips DRA ’09 and adapted to fit the contemporary American underground, “Blood Box” is much like a precursor to today’s Quentin Tarantino movies. Complete with a script dripping in vulgarity, blood and more than enough shouted iterations of “Fuck!” to leave ears ringing, it is just as undeniably entertaining and hilarious as said Tarantino movies — and accordingly, just as shallow in plotline.
The play begins with a fleeting scene that expertly sets the maliciously dark tone for the rest of the play: A female runner pauses her jogging to stretch luxuriously on the ground, oblivious to the ogling eyes of the male runner behind her. As she bouncily continues on her way, her admirer abruptly slips on both a ski mask and a sinister smile, and runs off in pursuit of his prey. This marks the first of several violent and fascinating mini-scenes serving as breaks from the main story line, and perhaps as the best parts of the play. All the while, an infectiously energetic grinding electro funk soundtrack booms menacingly over the stage.
The dark overtone of the first, brief scene persists throughout the main plot, which revolves around two comically incompetent journalists (played by Drew Lichtenberg DRA ’08 and Matt Moses DRA ’09) sent to interview the director (Jacob Gallagher-Ross DRA ’09) of a dubious mental facility, along with the myriad deranged or hapless characters they encounter in the process. The sanity of the director they interview quickly proves questionable, however, and the situations they find themselves in vary anywhere from violently grotesque to utterly hilarious.
Full of hysterical physical humor as it may be, the play’s story line seldom goes much deeper than the well-performed antics of the motley cast of characters. The main thread resolves itself with what was intended to be a sudden and bizarre plot twist, but the audience will likely have seen it coming from the first ten minutes of the play. And many of the smaller subplots are deprived of any sort of resolution at all: The audience gets no more closure than “… and then she was forced to sleep with the serial killer, a six-inch-long butcher knife hovering behind her back. The end.”
Despite unsatisfying elements, expertly utilized lighting and background effects achieve sensations like the sterile, fluorescent-light feeling of a doctor’s office (complete with a desk, falsely comforting stuffed animals and a suspiciously decrepit white door) and, alternately, the orange tacky glow of a cheap motel, where a rickety bed and cluttered nightstand provide the setting for a prostitute rendezvous.
Far from a Shakespearean masterpiece, “Blood Box” is its own entirely different, gruesome and hilarious type of play. Come prepared to switch to chocolate syrup, because strawberry will forevermore bring to mind images of savagely extracted human hearts, gouged-out eyes and falling dead bodies — just a thought.