Chicago BeAt … Deathscribe 2009: The Second Annual International Festival Of Radio Horror Plays

Hey parents, if you ever want your kiddos to eat their celery, tell them this: the snapping noise you hear crunching into the crisp veggie sounds eerily similar to a zombie chomping into a human skull.

That, folks, is the magic of Foley, which was a big part of the fun at Deathscribe 2009, the second annual radio horror play festival sponsored by Wildclaw Theatre and held at the Music Box last night. At a time when populist horror is personified by the horrendous “Saw” franchise, there was something special about hearing old-fashioned spooky yarns read by versatile voice actors, and enhanced by the sounds of snipping scissors, a battery-powered mini-fan, and a hand dancing in a tub of water, meant to represent a surgery, a buzzing mosquito and a trek across an African river, respectively. Brian Amidei, Wildclaw’s managing director, was the sound star of the night, utilizing ordinary objects to great dramatic effect. Eyes shut, you could have sworn you were hearing a gigantic mosquito man sucking the blood out of a clueless Southern lass, one of several sonic scenes Amidei brought to life.

The night consisted of five original 10-minute radio plays (selected from nearly 100 entries), dramatic readings of pop culture horror books du jour “Pride and Prejudice and Zombies” and “Sense and Sensibility and Sea Monsters,” staged radio commercials, live music and a bit of Edgar Allan Poe. But notably lacking were genuine scares. True its difficult to build up genuine horror in a span of 10-minute plays, and only the climax of the unsettling play “The Skinny Man” came remotely close to visceral terror. The variety format at least kept things moving along, although it also made for some inconsistency; off-beat bits, such as a pair of flat radio commercials and some musical interludes, could have been shorter, while the true gems of the evening weren’t long enough.

Tongue-in-decomposed cheek was the decided flavor throughout much of the program, and while fun at first, the wink wink, nudge nudge factor grew a bit stale over the long run. The funniest parts of the evening were executed by actors who didn’t broadcast that they were in on the joke. Thespian Lance Baker’s reading of a selection from “Pride and Prejudice and Zombies,” author Seth Grahame-Smith’s Jane Austen meets George Romero mash-up, was pitch-perfect. Baker opted for straight man, narrating the text in grand Austen fashion, his stuffy British voice steady, even as he read a passage detailing a brutal zombie attack at an evening party (cue celery), made all the funnier thanks to his measured delivery. The play “Bags of Blood,” involving a pair of Southern mamas yakking on a hot Florida day (plus a giant mosquito) was another comic highlight, courtesy of actors Rebecca Langguth and Lisa Linke’s slow, steady readings of Daniel Caffrey’s droll, deadpan script.

All in all, this made for a fun, unique Chicago night out. But there was one play far better than the rest, one that elevated the evening above blood, guts, guffaws and screams, that exemplified the ultimate power of horror as a genre that can use brains for more than just zombie food. It was Chris Hainsworth’s “Remembrance,” an exceptionally powerful, surprisingly somber collection of “audio recordings” documenting an Alzheimer’s patient’s interaction with a remarkable cure, and the surprising impact it has on her family, her doctor, even the world. Filled with beautifully rendered details, melancholy exchanges, and bolstered by an unsettling, intelligent, original premise, “Remembrance,” in its incarnation last night, recalled some of Ray Bradbury’s finest short stories. It was certainly deserving of the festival’s top prize, the Bloody Axe award, but Hainsworth’s piece is so strong and stirring, it deserves even more – to be adapted into a short story, a novel, or even a feature film.

Select Deathscribe recordings should be available soon at the Wildclaw blog; I’ll post a link here when they become available.