Theatre in Review: Massacre (Sing to Your Children) (Rattlestick Theatre)

There's trouble afoot when the most interesting character in a play is the murder victim, but that's the case with Massacre (Sing to Your Children).His name is Joe, and he is apparently the evil boss of a New Hampshire town. (What that means exactly, I cannot say. The playwright, Jose Rivera, does not put much store by coherence; noise and fury are his preferred tools.) Just before the lights come up on Act I, Joe has been savagely murdered by seven local citizens who have teamed up to rid their town of this monster. (Again, nothing is clear, but the dialogue alludes to various crimes committed by Joe, including dismemberment.) Having, among other things, stuck a pitchfork in Joe's throat, the seven have repaired to a local slaughterhouse for a moment of respite before charring the remains.

Instead of getting down to that business, which would be the efficient thing, they spend more than an hour hyperventilating, screaming, and otherwise trying to come to terms with the act they have committed. (Did I mention the fact they were wearing animal heads when they killed him? Under pain of death, I couldn't tell you why.) One of them, Erik, has a seizure, complete with spurts of blood shooting out of his chest, but, a few minutes later, he's making conversation. (There is no explanation for this.)

Anyway, just before the intermission, Joe shows up. (Normally, I might consider this a spoiler, but since nothing in Massacre makes any sense, I feel I have to share this information.) Whether he is really dead, a ghost, or a mass figment of the group's imagination is unclear. In any case, he looks untouched by sharp or blunt instruments. And, for a few minutes, largely thanks to the carefully controlled and deeply sinister work of Anatol Yusef as Joe, it looks like Massacre might get interesting. Slight of build and only occasionally raising his voice, Joe takes each one of his killers apart, flaying them alive psychologically by revealing their darkest secrets. (One is a rapist on the run, one is a child molester, etc.) The interest doesn't last, however, because the characters weren't compelling to begin with, and because Joe's revelations often don't match up with what little we know about them. And after a little while, you start to realize he's going to take apart all seven of them, and you dig in for a long evening.

In any case, what do we know about the people in Massacre (Sing to Your Children)? Who is Joe and how has he enslaved an entire town? Why has no one called the New Hampshire State Police? The FBI? Are the killers worried about getting caught? Who is Panama, the mysterious ringleader of the group? How does Joe know everyone's secrets? And is he dead or not, damn it?

There's plenty of shouting on stage, enough confrontations to fill out a fight card, a character who vomits blood, and dialogue like "We were supposed to kill him in the slaughterhouse," "We did this killing like family, man," and "What do you eat before you burn a man's body to ashes?" There's an interlude of hip-hop music, allowing everyone to freak out for a couple of minutes. Confusion reigns: I've been to plays before where the audience is unaware that the play is over; this is the first play I've ever attended where nobody realized it was intermission.

In any case, the director, Brian Mertes, gets extremely committed performances from his cast, who have to portray something akin to post-traumatic stress disorder while drenched in blood and delivering Rivera's overripe dialogue. I felt especially sorry for Brendan Averett as Hector, the gay diner owner, who has to spend the entire play in a pair of green Y-front underpants; in the thank-God-for-small-mercies department, when he squats on the toilet, he is partially blocked by part of the set.

I have never been in a slaughterhouse, but I somehow feel that Andromache Chalfant's set is a convincing depiction of the real thing. Despite the fact that the windows are mostly covered over, the lighting designer, Austin Smith, manages to suggest the passage of night into day. The sound design, by Daniel Baker and Aaron Meicht, of Broken Chord, provides solid reinforcement for the musical interludes. The costumes by Cait O'Connor are extremely bizarre -- remember those animal heads -- with the actors dressed in layers of unmatching fabrics, many of which look like they have been hand-painted -- just the sort of thing you wear to a murder. I'm still trying to figure out why one of the characters, late in the play, put on a floor-length Indian headdress.

If any of the above sparks even the slightest interest, then I haven't described it adequately. For a few minutes in Act I, I thought Rivera was trying to say something about how violent revolutions -- like some of those in the Arab Spring -- have unintended violent consequences, but, really, this is giving his play far too much credit. It must be said that Mertes provides two big shock moments, one in each act; the one in Act II made the audience jump in a way I haven't seen since I saw the Broadway tryout of Deathtrap in 1978. They don't help much, however. The rest of Massacre (Sing to Your Children), however loud, is pure torpor.--David Barbour