GBST’s ‘Blackhollow’: It takes a team to terrorize you

By Rich Fahey

STONEHAM – It takes a team to terrorize you.  Start with the writer,   crafting a tale.  It goes nowhere without an actor with the chops to bring those characters to life, and designers who can visualize and put the playwright’s vision on stage when it comes to set, sound, lighting, costumes.

They all work together to set the scene in The Greater Boston Stage Company’s world premiere production of “Blackhollow,” subtitled “A Gothic Tale of Possession.”

The Don Fulton New Works Project has delivered a series of world premieres to Greater Boston Stage Company. And this latest – and one of the best I’ve seen  — is by Weylin Symes, the Greater Boston Stage’s longtime producing artistic director who has overseen the growth of the theater over the last quarter century.

He co-directs with Daniel Begin, and they have teamed up to produce a well-constructed Gothic psychological thriller that pays homage to other pieces of horror fiction, most notably Stephen King’s “Carrie.”

The tension steadily ratcheted up to an almost unbearable level in the 100 minutes with no intermission at a recent performance.

Anna Slate is Lucy Cull, a nurse at the Blackhollow Criminal Lunatic Asylum outside London in the winter of 1838. Slate will not only portray Cull but a catalogue of other characters, including other nurses, doctors, patients and staffers at the asylum as well as voices, dialects, etc. It is a true theatrical tour de force,

As we begin, a shaken Cull takes pen to paper to tell her tale.  She has been at the asylum for 13 years, first arriving as a domestic servant at the age of 11 after unfortunately witnessing her father stab her mother 17 times until dead. She has long felt the guilt of not being able to stop the attack.  An aunt arranged for the job at the asylum  but would not take her in.

Four years after arriving, Cull became a nurse, and nine years after beginning that job, she is chafing under the thumb of Matron Agatha Trammell, head of female staff whom Lucy desperately wants to replace some day.

Lucy recalls the events in question beginning with the arrival of Dr. Cole Ashburn as the new medical superintendent at Blackhollow. Matron Trammell appoints Lucy as his guide to the institution, and she and the staff are instructed to cooperate with him in his work.

Experiments made in the name of science have produced terror since Mary Shelley’s “Frankenstein,” and Dr. Ashburn’s experiments are at the heart of this tale.

He expresses his philosophy: “No sacrifice is too great a price to pay if it is in service to the onward march of scientific achievement and human progress.”

Uh-oh. We have heard this before. Lucy’s roommate and fellow nurse Clara finds a letter from the handsome doctor in their room and teases her about it; Lucy is to meet the doctor in his private surgery the next morning.

When she arrives – armed with a scalpel just in case — she is introduced to another patient named Ida Ridley, who has a a long dark scar on her badly disfigured lower right leg and a near lifeless stare. She has been a patient at Blackhallow since she murdered her father and has been diagnosed as schizophrenic.

Ashburn informs Lucy she is about to be part of the first Infinity Transfusion, which will make medical history.

Upping the ante, the doctor informs Lucy she will be injected with a simple Mercury Arsenic solution which he calls “harmless” before the transfusion, process, which he believes will restore Ida to full health.

While she begins to object, the doctor injects her anyway and the transfusion causes confusion and terrifying visions until she awakes.

The tranfusions will continue and soon things begin to happen to a ruthless attendant named Peter Butcher, and, eventually, veteran Doctor William Craven, a long-time doctor at Blackhollow with a well-known history of sexually attacking female staff and patients.

Without throwing out too many spoilers, there will be blood.

The design team put together to tell Symes’s tale includes scenic designer Katy Monthei, whose has devised a raised room at the rear of the stage as Lucy’s room, from where Lucy can emerge and descend to the asylum itself. Lighting designer Cory Whittemore keeps things as dark and spooky as needed, while nonpareil sound designer David Remedios captures the sounds of the lunatic asylum: screams, doors slamming. voices yelling, pleading, water dripping.

If there is one area where Symes might have fallen short, the last 15 minutes tend to wander a bit and it appears Symes might be looking for the exact place to stick the landing.

Still, it’s a satisfying enough ending. Take a ride on the terror train leaving from Stoneham through Nov. 8.

The Greater Boston Stage Company world premiere production of “Blackhollow.” Written by Weylin Symes. Directed by Symes and Daniel Begin. At the Greater Boston Stage Company through Nov. 8. GreaterBostonStage.org