Intimate Tension, INSPIRED BY TRUE EVENTS — Review

To paraphrase Hitchcock’s oft-repeated distinction between surprise and suspense: a bomb going off under a table is the former; depicting the bomb under the table, long before it explodes and as people dine over it, is the wicked latter. Ryan Spahn’s new play, Inspired by True Events, brilliantly staged by Knud Adams in a West Village theatre’s green room, dives right into the paralyzing heart of suspense for 95 minutes. It took over a dozen blocks, long after exiting those cramped quarters, to begin to untangle the knot in my stomach.

Though loosely based on a 2010 double murder committed by an actor who dismembered his victims’ bodies before performing a two-show day in a regional production of Nine, it focuses instead on the mundanity leading up to the situation. 

The day after a fictional Rochester theatre’s surprisingly successful opening night, long-suffering stage manager Mary (Dana Scurlock) tidies up and greets each actor as they arrive for another performance. Colin (Jack DiFalco), perhaps a star-on-the-rise after receiving glowing reviews, seems hungover, and we soon learn he’s broken up with his girlfriend. Her main audition competitor, Eileen (Mallory Portnoy), regrets not telling rubberneckers to come check out the show after “surviving” a minor bicycle accident on her way to the theatre. And Robert (Lou Liberatore), uncharacteristically late and sporting the bad toupee which some critics noted, was held up in traffic, puzzled by nearby police traffic.

Three of them will soon discover a duffle bag stuffed with contents way worse than what they’d thought to be sweaty gym clothes. That moment acts as the showing of the bomb under the table, and the tension is ratcheted up to a nearly unbearable degree for the remainder of the play. With an audience of 35 seated on perpendicular sides of the action, it’s impossible not to feel superbly suffocated, though that is not to discount the work of the creative team. Lindsay G. Fuori’s realistic set often has the actors performing into the large vanity mirror, which offers glimpses into cracked-open doors the audience otherwise couldn’t see. And Paige Seber’s tenebrous lighting matches Peter Mills Weiss’ ominous sound design in enhancing atmosphere.

Spahn, too, devises a clever trick by involving a monitor – the kind actors can view while awaiting their cue – in the play. The ghastliness of that grainy black-and-white, as the actors spectrally perform the play in a room just beyond the audience, and come to watch as the culprit delivers their lines onstage, is ingenious. And slick touches, like the mice running around the underfunded theatre’s air vents whose thumps increase dread without cheapening the main narrative’s suspense. Under Adams’ always-sharp direction, this is a not-to-be-missed pressure cooker.

‍Inspired by True Events is in performance through August 4, 2024 at 154 Christopher Street in New York City. For tickets and more information, visit here.