Chris Hury and Martha Harms. Photo by Matt Mrozek.

From left: Chris Hury, Leah Spillman, Martha Harms and Drew Wall. Photo by Matt Mrozek.

Pillow fight girls from left: Martha Harms, Rebekah Kennedy and Leah Spillman. Photo by Matt Mrozek.

That's Lisa Hassler in the wheelchair, with the rest of the "Slasher" cast. Photo by Matt Mrozek.

  

Slasher

by Allison Moore

Presented by Kitchen Dog Theater

November 13 - December 12

at Heldt-Hall Theater
McKinney Avenue Contemporary
3120 McKinney Ave.
Dallas, TX 75204
214-953-1055

$15-$25 (discounts for students, seniors)

8pm Thursdays-Saturdays & some Wednesdays; 2:30pm some Sundays
Runtime: 85 minutes with no intermission

In an early scene in Allison Moore's comedy Slasher, now showing at Kitchen Dog Theater, two filmmaker types engage in a Tarantino-esque discussion of the 1974 horror classic The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. A major part of what makes Tobe Hooper's groundbreaking film so genuinely scary, it's decided by guys who've had too many Shiner Bocks, is not necessarily the constant threat of a faceless power tool-wielding monster. Try the incredibly creepy, demented, cannibalistic family committing the heinous acts.

Family, as Eugene O'Neill and Sam Shepard have been telling us all along, can be more frightening than any nightmare.

What? Think it's odd to mention masters of American drama to a play that's basically a brain-check sendup of a film genre unabashedly designed for entertainment value? Perhaps. But it's not dissimilar to what Moore's play attempts, and quite successfully. Slasher is an alternately—sometimes simultaneously—funny and scary play meant as a theatrical equivalent of popcorn entertainment. But that won't stop Moore from interjecting themes of sexual objectification, religious-sponsored terrorism and victimization into the script. And oh, yeah, don't leave out the idea that your family members can sometimes be the scariest creatures you'll ever confront.

The dysfunctional family storyline comes at the expense of Frances (Lisa Hassler), the Austin mother of teenager Hildy (Rebekah Kennedy) and 21-year-old Sheena (Martha Harms), who's working her way through college by waitressing at a Hooter's-type joint called Buster's. Frances is confined to a motorized wheelchair from an accident that may or may not have left her paralyzed from the waist down. The guy she blames for the incident is a filmmaker, Marc (Chris Hury), who's in town to make his latest horror flick, Bloodbath. Just like the folks behind the original Texas Chainsaw Massacre, he knows that shooting a movie in the Lone Star State is cheaper than doing it in the traditional locales.

And because this is drama and it helps when characters are interconnected in interesting ways, Marc and his assistant, film geek Jody (Drew Wall), are at Buster's when Marc spots the "pretty but not too pretty" Sheena and decides to cast her as the last girl standing in Bloodbath.

What follows is a wacky funhouse ride as slimeball Marc shoots some of the film's scenes before what's left of his money runs out, and Frances—clutching onto somewhat dated feminist ideals and her prescription drug addiction—goes through much trouble trying to keep her daughter from degrading herself in Marc's film.

Moore, a playwright who did her undergrad work at Southern Methodist University and has been championed by Kitchen Dog—this is the fourth of her plays staged here since 2001—has also become a regular at the Humana Festival of New American Plays in Louisville, Kentucky, where Slasher played in the spring (it had its world premiere in 2007 at the University of North Texas). In this and another play that made the Louisville-to-Dallas circuit, Hazard County, Moore riffs on pop culture by mirroring it with seemingly irredeemable characters, stereotype analysis and slight social commentary. (Hazard County used The Dukes of Hazzard as a launchpad.)

And she's not afraid to throw in some delicious irony, such as when Sheena, who in the slasher flick plays a skimpily dressed woman being terrorized by a psychopath, says to her physically challenged mother, "You're such a victim!"

Not to imply that Slasher is by any means deep. But like the best of escapist entertainment, it benefits from leaving the viewer satisfied that the excitement came with tidbits of thought provocation, even if they were nothing revelatory.

Kitchen Dog's production, directed with breakneck pacing by Tina Parker, plays up the thrill factor. Wall, Kennedy, Harms and Hury, recently returned to town after a stint in New York, all turn in funny and on-target performances, and achieve a commendable sense of ensemble. KDT regular Leah Spillman plays multiple characters, including a big-haired Sonic carhop and several Bloodshed victims who are killed off before Sheena's character. Her most hilarious role is as an uptight Godnut who's likely involved in an abortion clinic bombing. Talk about holy terror.

But this show belongs to Hassler, who is typically the funniest actor in whatever show she's in. Here she finds extra layers to an emotionally tormented, drug-addicted woman. But, much like the character she played in KDT's 2008 production of Sick (Harms played her daughter in that one, too), she is above all a mother who will stop at nothing for her children. And if that means coming after an exploitative, douchebag horror director with a machete or power tool, then so be it.

The acting and the play are elevated by the K-Dogs' cleverly designed production, which features Suzanne Lavender's aptly manic lighting and Cameron Cobb's bloody special effects (one of Spillman's victims has a knife plunged in her skull) and fight choreography, which is always more heart-pounding with an electric drill in the mix. Cobb also created original music that recalls the spine-chilling "don't go in there!" sound motifs of horror classics such as Psycho, Halloween and Friday the 13th. (Speaking of, the show opened on Friday, November 13. That's smart season planning, folks.)

Best of all is Clare Floyd DeVries' multilevel set with ramps and flashing string lights, mimicking a midway funhouse. To add to the effect, Cathey Miller has painted stylish sideshow banners for the spookhouse, one of a buxom woman and another of Halloween baddie Michael Myers. There's even a circular, ground-level entryway with those vertical rubber strips seen in large walk-in freezers where meat carcasses hang from giant hooks. When Hassler motors her chair furiously through this portal, it's as if she's exiting the carnival attraction in a rogue car that's jumped the track.

No one is safe on this thrillride, and that's a big part of the attraction.