Theater Mu Nails Cinematic Horror Onstage in Hells Canyon

Stage horror can be a mixed bag. Even productions with huge budgets can struggle to escape the uncanny valley between the intimacy that gives theater its power and the artificial trickery that fuels tension and jump scares. I say this as someone who loves both—I’ve emerged from many onstage thrillers less terrified than apologetic. “Well, that was a neat effort. You can tell they tried.”

This was not my reaction to Hells Canyon. Theater Mu’s cabin-in-the-woods nightmare, which closes at the Jungle Theater this weekend, is a blistering-fast hundred minutes propelled by great performances, meticulous attention to detail, and, yes, effective scares. Every shift in power, every open window, every stray lighting cue feeds the mounting dread that eventually swallows the play whole. Mu artistic director Lily Tung Crystal cites The Shining, Rosemary’s Baby, Hereditary, and Get Out as inspirations in her show notes. The show is also heavily inspired by the historical Hells Canyon massacre, in which white gang members slaughtered as many as 34 Chinese miners in 1887. The play is set more than 100 years after those events, but they influence its drama in both subtle and violently obvious ways.

Kaitlyn Cheng, Ryan Colbert, Becca Claire Hart, and Gregory Yang as Ariel, Doug, Claire, and Tommy in Hells Canyon. Rich Ryan/Theater Mu

I can’t give the production enough credit for all the ways it finds stage equivalents for screen-based genre tropes. For instance, the cabin where the show takes place set is split into thirds, with a living room and two bedrooms, all one open layout. The audience can peer into each room and see what characters do when they think nobody is watching, all simultaneously, no intermission, almost no breaks in action. This does a fantastic job of isolating the characters, because we see them transition from their public to private selves again and again, contrasted with the public and private selves of their friends. Ben (Matt Lytle) and Claire (Becca Claire Hart), the rich white couple who invited their bandmates out to the cabin for a major announcement, are frustratingly overbearing in public. They carry many of these traits into their bedroom, but we also see their specific rituals of care and comfort, which expand their complexity as people. Brother and sister Ariel (Kaitlyn Cheng) and Tommy (Gregory Yang) have a more strained relationship in private, but it’s fascinating to see how Tommy shows up for his sister regardless of context when she most needs him.

My lone gripe is with the last few scenes, which transition a bit abruptly from the personality-based drama into more metaphorical fantasy. This could also be a natural consequence of the genre itself—as Stephen King once said, “What’s behind the door or lurking at the top of the stairs is never as frightening as the door or the staircase itself.” Put another way, I liked the first half so much that the back half almost felt like an interruption. Keiko Green’s script does such a fantastic job layering all the interpersonal and power disparities into everyday drama, at drawing tension from all these people just sitting and talking in a well-lit room, that the final movement felt just a tiny smidge overwrought. This is ugly subject matter, and the ending is ugly to match it—but that same ugliness is present in Claire fawning over Ariel (a surrogate mother carrying her unborn child) with a clear implication she cares far more about the fetus than its human vessel, and in Claire and Ben’s manipulation of Tommy and Doug (Ryan Colbert), whose financial situation doesn’t allow them to travel and tour like their more privileged bandmates.

Kaitlyn Cheng as Ariel. Rich Ryan/Theater Mu

One obvious (and cited) inspiration is Jordan Peele and the movement of socially conscious horror he’s inspired the last decade. But the formula goes back to the origins of horror itself, from Dracula as a metaphor for the rich to Curse of the Cat People as a metaphor for generational trauma to Night of the Living Dead as a one-room potboiler in which a crisis of monsters reveals that the true monsters lie dormant in the hearts and minds of people living “ordinary” lives. The big question that lingers long after the adrenaline dies down: “How much do we trust these polite facades when the shit really goes down?”

Keiko Green’s script updates that legacy in novel and compelling plays, and the production team translates it shockingly well into a difficult genre. But I’d be remiss if I didn’t end with the cast, who serve as Hells Canyon‘s MVPs. Ultimately, none of what I’ve mentioned so far would land if the people onstage didn’t sell us on the tension, convince us of the urgency of their lives and feelings. Director Katie Bradley clearly trusts her cast, and time and again they pay off that trust with and fully realized and captivating performances.

Hells Canyon is at the Jungle Theater in Minneapolis through March 17, 2024. The March 16 performances feature audio description (matinee) and supertitles (evening); masks are required at the Sunday closing performance.

Theater Mu