When many think of “Paranormal Activity”, play doesn’t come to mind. But this theatrical adaptation does exactly that.
Following a hugely successful U.S. tour and a run in London’s West End, Levi Holloway’s supernatural horror play Paranormal Activity comes to Broadway this August.
The stage show features a unique plot from the same-named 2007 movie but is set in its universe. The Paranormal Activity play is about James (Travis A. Knight) and Lou (Cher Álvarez), a young couple who move from Chicago to London to escape their past. Though the hauntings strain their marriage, they have to work together in order to defeat the evil forces at play. The stage version of Paranormal Activity performs on an intimate and domestic scale yet delivers more thrills, chills and screams than Broadway has seen in years, and giving the franchise a legit afterlife.
The fresh element is that it’s live theater, without benefit of cutaways, close-ups or tracking shots. Yes, it’s only a play but the stakes feel higher when everything in front of us is all too real.
The original film told its story with only found footage — camcorders, security cameras — giving viewers a voyeuristic thrill. On stage, the audience is the camera, peering into a cutaway of set designer Fly Davis’ ominous, two-story house, lit with foreboding foreshadowing by Anna Watson.
Scripter Levi Holloway — who struck out with Broadway’s” Grey House” in 2023 — returns to the horror genre, evoking the mysterious and shadowy feel of the films. He creates two new appealing lead characters, not unlike its original movie’s young married pair. Lou is still deeply affected from an earlier paranormal trauma while husband James is skeptical-but-supportive.
Following strange electrical malfunctions, a stunning disappearing act and more than a few things that go bump in the night, James soon becomes a believer and the couple reaches out to a podcast spiritualist, Ethylene Cotgrave (Eva Kaminsky) a Brit-cool ghostbuster whose séance goes south.
Also on hand with intrusive advice via FaceTime calls from stateside — and projected on a flat-screen TV (a nice nod to the original film’s M.O.) — is James’ pious mother Carolanne (Shannon Cochran, terrifically terrifying in her own Southern smothering way).
London critics praised the way Paranormal Activity takes the horror genre seriously as an art form, providing jump-out-of-your seat scares alongside gripping emotional stakes. It’s set to be a real roller-ghoster of frights.
Interested readers can find out more and purchase tickets here.
