Right on schedule for the spookiest time of year, The Rage of the Stage Players are summoning monstrous new horrors to the stage.
Miserable Creatures, at South Park Theatre through Nov. 5, is based on Mary Shelley’s iconic Frankenstein mythology. The theatrical work is the latest from Rage’s founder and resident playwright, James Michael Shoberg, who for more than 20 years has been reimagining well-known fantastical stories for mature audiences with “dark tastes.”
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Miserable Creatures is described as taking place “in a bleak city, in a nebulous time [when] Victor Frankenstein, a brilliant doctor whose pursuit is cutting-edge neurological studies, develops a brain modification device he dubs Prometheus, for a prestigious institute. But, when it’s discovered he’s been conducting unauthorized human trials … his program is suspended.”
The savage beating of Victor’s younger brother sets off a string of events that leads to the doctor “undertaking a mad endeavor” to restore William’s intellect and memories in the body of a sadistic killer.
Of course, things go horror-bly wrong.
Writes Shoberg, the play now at South Park Theatre is “a combination of grim neo-noir and Le Théâtre du Grand-Guignol. Miserable Creatures is a living graphic novel; dark and visceral exploration of how hubris and ambition can blind one to the ethical ramifications of one’s own actions – until it’s too late.”
Miserable Creatures arrives onstage on the heels of another Shoberg original making waves overseas.
On Oct. 17, Prague Horrortheater presented the European premiere of his stage adaptation of Tom Holland’s 1985 vampire film Fright Night. That play had its world premiere in Pittsburgh in 2018.
Miserable Creatures continues at South Park Theatre, Corrigan Drive and Brownsville Road, South Park, Oct. 27-29 and Nov. 3-5; showtimes are 8 p.m. Tickets: https://www.rageofthestage.com/tickets/
Categories: Show Previews
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