Review: ‘Grey House’ Offers an Expertly Haunted Broadway Experience

In the play “Grey House,” four strange girls, aged between 12 and 200, live in isolation in a cabin in the woods. Marlow, portrayed by Sophia Anne Caruso, is the alpha, bossing the others around – and also bossing the stranded outsiders, because of course there are always stranded outsiders in a horror story. The prime trope of this play is coy creepiness. Of the small knife she occasionally brandishes, Marlow, who gives off Wednesday Addams vibes, comfortingly says, “If I put it in your eye, it wouldn’t even hit your brain.”

“Grey House,” currently showing at the Lyceum Theater, is an expertly assembled assault that is more reminiscent of John Carpenter movies than anything seen on stage since the age of melodrama. The play trades on a million horror tales, but above all, it provides freak-out fun with the four telekinetic weirdos and their den mother Raleigh, played by Laurie Metcalf.

At least, those trappings are superb. The house, designed by Scott Pask and lit by Natasha Katz, and especially given voice by the sound designer, Tom Gibbons, seems to be the repository of feelings and history that everyone else is mostly sidestepping. Though sometimes charming, the teasing quality of this play should not be taken too seriously, regardless of its allusions to real-world horror of the past and present.

“Grey House” keeps its secrets as quiet as its shocks are conspicuous. Only gradually do we get any sense of how the marriage of Max and Henry was crashing even before the accident, or why the coven of girls, if not their minder, has such an interest in helping it come apart completely. The play is like a jukebox musical, squeezing familiar arias – gore, ghosts, what have you – into a chic and enjoyable but mostly empty new container. While the effort is meaningful to the artists – with playwright Levi Holloway beginning to think about the story after a family tragedy – it may not be as meaningful to audiences.

But as one of the last plays to appear on Broadway exploring the opportunities and language of an unfashionable horror form, “Grey House” offers artists a rare chance to do so. The cast, including Metcalf, invests in clichés without condescension and does much to de-cliché them. Yet, horror may simply work better in a less live medium. When Max and Henry show up at the cabin, unaware anyone is there, they look around at the spooky surroundings, listen to the wind howling, and somehow find it all familiar.

Grey House
At the Lyceum Theater, Manhattan; greyhousebroadway.com. Running time: 1 hour 40 minutes.