Playwright: Adapted from Jack. Finney's novel by Paul Edwards . At: City Lit Theater, 1030 W. Bryn Mawr ( The Edgewater Presbyterian Church ) . Phone: 773-293-3682; $25 . Runs through: May 9
Never mind the threat of those commie conforming pod-people. Death by exposition is the real killer in City Lit's adaptation of The Body Snatchers. Jack Finney's 1955 novel of the same name and the 1956 film based on it were terrifying and metaphorically groundbreaking as an allegory of monsters in the smiling guise of the good people next door. In 1956, the titular spores stood for the creeping evil of the Soviet menace. But the story itself is timeless, transcending the Red Scare. Today, it could be a commentary on Orwellian conformity and the scary annihilation of individuality in a society where everyone goes along to get along.
Unfortunately, there's nothing sinister in director/adaptor Paul Edwards' staging. There are two primary problems. First, there's the adaptation's tongue-in-cheek self-awareness. That tone would be fine in smaller doses, but it's so overdone that it leaches the story of its necessary edge by bloating it with campiness. Secondand far more troublesomeis all that exposition; monologue upon monologue of explanation, description, philosophizing; and ( worst of all ) narration of what should be the story's most horrifying events. If you were to make a pie chart, the production would be about 85 percent telling and 10 percent showing. That's a deadly ratio for a story founded on terror and tension.
Perhaps the prime example of exposition gone wrong comes in the first act, as the town psychiatrist explains the concept of mass hysteria in an interminable monologue about the Mad Gasser of Mattoon. The story of that gasser is one of the creepiest bits of American lore around, the kind of tale that should leave the hair on the back of your neck standing straight up and your skin prickling with unease. Here, it flatlines about the midway point, disintegrating into a monotone recitation of pop psychology. When a phenomenon like the Mad Gasser gets boring, you know you've got a problem.
Edwards seems to be trying to make up for the lack of actual action with audio visual design. The projections, in and of themselves, are marvelous. Edwards and Daniel Carlyon artfully use still photography and film in color and black and white to evoke "I Like Ike" Americana in all its pre-fab, atomic-age glory. Vintage ads for bomb shelters and cigarettes ( "Your Doctor Recommends Viceroys!" ) , film clips of alien invasions, eerie images of identical subdivisions repetitively sprawling as far as the eye can seethese are the real stars of The Body Snatchers.
But as vivid and impactful as it is, videography alone cannot sustain a live stage play. Here, it soon becomes a distraction rather than an enhancement. Moreover, it cannot make up for countless scenes where would-be suspenseful chases/ crowd convergences are depicted by small groups of actors meandering in circles on a largely bare stage.
Finally, in the sole scene when action trumps narration, the fight choreography is dreadful. When the besieged Dr. Miles and his would-be lady love Becky stop running ( in circles ) long enough to finally attack the pod people with syringes and fists, the violence simply doesn't appear even remotely, well, violent. Choreography replaces spontaneity and instead of being fraught with peril, the scene is merely silly.