Back in the Shadows Again: The Lighter Side of “Dark Shadows”
Chicago Viewpoints Ensemble
By Jack Helbig
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I think the growing interest in Halloween is a good thing. In a culture that increasingly demands that human beings think and act like robots and computers–squelching feelings while they get the job done at a faster and faster rate–Halloween gives us a chance to exercise our imaginations and an excuse to dress up, role-play, and indulge our dark, repressed fantasies. It’s also the one time of year when as a society we actually celebrate the ugly and the scary, albeit rather cartoonishly, admitting that the world is not as beautiful or as effortlessly young as it is on TV. We are not all nubile and glamorous and athletic. And even if we are, eventually we all age and die–facts we frequently face only in the distorted mirrors of spook houses and horror movies.
One local critic complained that Back in the Shadows Again moves too slowly and that the characters spend too much time talking about what they’re going to do and what they’ve just done. That’s nonsense. Part of the charm of the original daytime series, which ran from 1966 to 1971, was that it always took its sweet, moody time. Following the conventions of soap operas of that era, the characters spent a good long while chewing over conversations overheard and events that had just happened–or were about to happen, they feared. And part of the brilliance of the Free Associates’ satire is just how close they come to re-creating that aspect of the show: clearly they’ve watched over and over again every tape they could get their hands on.
Jeffrey Jones’s Seventy Scenes of Halloween is a masterful black comedy that weaves the middle-class cliches of Halloween–dime-store masks, candy corn, trick-or-treaters–into a brooding meditation on life, love, and the dark secrets that drive us apart. A series of blackouts (70 in all) in no particular order, the play reveals on a Halloween evening all sides of a couple’s flawed relationship–Jeff’s childishness, Joan’s moodiness, Jeff’s lapse into adultery.
After five minutes of either of Seventh Sense Productions’ one-acts, what you want to know is how long till the tedium is over. Sadly, the program fails to give a complete running time. That, a small flashlight, and something to read to pass the time would improve the show immeasurably.
