Demons Hiding Within

Proxy – Underscore Theatre

In 2014 two 12-year-old girls in rural Wisconsin lured their friend to the woods where they stabbed her repeatedly with a knife. The victim crawled to the roadside, where she was found and treated in the hospital. The two girls were arrested, tried and found not guilty, by reason of insanity. They’ve been sentenced to spend their lives receiving professional treatment in a mental institution.

The girls later confessed that they’d stabbed their friend in order  to prove their loyalty to a scary, ethereal character, from an online site that featured paranormal stories about gruesome murders and suicides. The internet location is a recreational site, solely intended to frighten its readers. The girls became obsessed with a personage called The Slender Man, a tall, pale, faceless entity, dressed all in black, who causes paranoid behavior in individuals. He’s depicted as a creature who hides in forests and murders children. The girls believed in the reality of The Slender Man and wanted to become his proxies. They thought that by killing someone it would protect their families from harm; then they’d be able to go live with The Slender Man in his mansion.

Quite likely inspired by this horrific news event, New York-based writer and director Austin Regan took this shocking story and adapted it into a fascinating script. With music and lyrics by prolific songwriter, Alexander Sage Oyen, featuring additional material contributed by Rachel Franco, Underscore Theatre Company launches its new season with this mesmerizing non-Equity world premiere. Directed with flair and imagination by Stephanie Rohr, supported by expert musical direction by T.J. Anderson, this new musical is both entertaining and creative. It imagines both the perpetrator and the victim fifteen years after the crime. Through this enthralling story and its punk rock score theatergoers will see this ghastly event in a whole different light.

Vanessa is an edgy writer for an online, Minnesota-based news magazine called DougFeed, named for Doug, its founder, editor and Vanessa’s sometime boyfriend. The magazine’s popularity is floundering and both Doug and Vanessa stand to lose their jobs. To boost readership, Nessa decides to write something truly tense and extremely personal. She believes it’s time to revisit her past and unearth the demons hiding within. Nessa decides to return home to interview Ronnie, her best friend who, at age twelve, stabbed her over and over again in the forest and left her for dead. Confined to a mental institution, Ronnie (formerly Veronica) agrees to being interviewed by a writer named Gwen, who’s actually Nessa in disguise.

In addition to facing her would-be murderer, Vanessa is also painfully reunited with Sean, her slacker younger brother, and Martha, the mother she blames for not understanding the trauma she went through as a child, following the crime. Adding to the tension, Doug’s decided to follow Nessa to her family homestead in an attempt to rekindle their romantic relationship. But Vanessa’s totally unprepared for how reuniting with Veronica will open up old wounds and reawaken old feelings of anger, fear and, ironically, love.

The two best reasons for seeing this production are its magnificently talented leading ladies. Carisa Gonzalez absolutely owns the stage as Vanessa. Her total commitment to this character and honest portrayal of a young woman trying to be cool and flippant, but who discovers a whole lot about herself hidden deep inside, is worth the price of admission. Not only can we see everything going on in this lovely actor’s expressive face, but her sensational, powerful voice makes every one of her songs an emotional experience to be savored. Musical monologues, like “Write Myself Out,” “Her and Me” and “That Haunt Me;” and tuneful dialogues, such as “To Find Who I Am” and “Fake IDs,” sung with her kid brother (played with appropriate dorkiness by Kyle Kite), “Boss Friend” and “I Know,” shared with Doug (a likable Michael Meija), and “Have an Adventure” and “Gwen/Ashamed,” harmonized with Martha (played with poignance by Jenny Rudnick), give to credence to the fact that this gifted performer is a star. 

Tessa Dettman is equally excellent, brilliantly playing Ronnie with pathos and passion. Although not given as much stage time as Vanessa, Ms. Dettman creates a heartbreaking character who’s made great advances in her mental health, while still suffering from guilt for the crime she committed against her best friend. Also displaying a gorgeous voice, Ms. Dettman impresses with songs like “Changing,” “Even If I Wanted To,” “Her” and the touching “Nothing in This World.” Ronnie says that she doesn’t see the Proxy Man anymore, although he still visits her at the Institution. Kept in isolation, except for scheduled visits from her family and counselor, Ronnie’s expressive artwork has become her only friend and, by painting and drawing her feelings, Veronica conveys how she wishes she could free herself from all the demons hiding within.

T.J. Anderson’s musical direction is showcased in the accomplished vocal work offered by the cast, as well as his conducting a talented five-piece backstage band. Jeremy Hollis has transformed the modest Understudy Theater space into a room embellished and brightened with walls that amount to a memory box of artwork and chotchkes from both Vanessa and Veronica’s lives. The production’s enhanced by Benjamin Carne’s emotional lighting and Tim McNulty’s appropriate sound design.

This is another impressive production by the only theatre company in Chicago that’s devoted to producing exciting, new musicals and bringing them to life. Like their previous productions “Carrie 2: The Rage” and “Haymarket,” skillfully directed and magnificently performed by a gifted cast of five, this chilling new show is not only appropriate for this time of year, but it’s a gritty, sometime humorous, musical that’s as moving and thought-provoking as it is entertaining.

Highly Recommended

Reviewed by Colin Douglas

Presented October 20-November 24 by Underscore Theatre Company at the Understudy, 4609 N. Clark St., Chicago.

Tickets are available in person at the box office or by going to www.underscoretheatre.org.

Additional information about this and other area productions can be found by visiting www.theatreinchicago.com.