‘The Silence In Harrow House’ Creates Terror by Design (Review)
Puppetry and environment fuel suspense in Rough House Theatre Co.’s latest show
Living in Chicago, it’s usually hard to avoid someone talking about the architectural genius of the city’s buildings for too long. That being said, if you can tune out the so-called experts and take in the sights yourself, you’ll soon discover the boosting is true. While not having the grandeur of a planned city like Paris, Chicago doesn’t build anything without careful consideration. And, of course, we also have local legend Frank Lloyd Wright. With many of his early Prairie School buildings scattered throughout the Chicago suburbs, Wright’s work functions as museums that any and all can visit: a marriage of style and function.
But what if the designer had something else in mind? What if instead of peace and harmony, fear and dread crawled across your heart, pulling you tightly further into darkness? It’s this kind of a twisted take of Chicago’s architect that The Silence In Harrow House invites its audience to experience.
The show is staged at the historic Chopin Theatre in Wicker Park, which has been carefully preserved as a performance space, decked out in marble and golden décor, with painted walls and deep crimson red curtains abound. I descend into the basement lobby, checking in. I receive a program with a letter from Vincent Adler, the Director of Preservation for the Architecture Firm of Milton Harrow, on the reverse. The letter informs me that as a “trustee” in the firm, I’m welcome to come and experience the dream for society conceived by Harrow and his proteges.
Vincent Adler soon greets the audience in person; he turns out to be a life-sized puppet with legs and limbs. The puppet explains in more detail Harrow’s vision of the world. Unfortunately the vision has one too many commonalities with Ayn Rand’s Objectivism to my personal liking. The older I get, I realize it’s no longer violence or gore that makes my blood run cold but rather unbridled and dangerous life philosophies that put one group of people above everyone else for the flimsiest reasons. So when Alder starts inviting the audience in slowly, I’m gripped with fear already on how Harrow might have brought such ideas to life.
At first glance, the set appears to have simple uniformity with matching brown tones and parallel hallways. My initial impression is that of an open space but as I begin to wander the same halls over and over, the openness strikes me as being devoid of feeling. The darkness does not create an intimate space but rather a limiting one. After lapping the halls for what feels like the 100th time, I realize there’s no way out, that by erasing the entrance from the house’s blueprint, it has been erased from it in real life as well. With this realization, Harrow and his protégés’ creepy and vile designs on humanity start to literally come out of the woodwork.
As an adult, I’ve not been one for puppetry, particularly since the Sesame Street look seems to be the American standard. However, there’s no cartoonish stylization at work in Harrow House. The level of puppet design at work here is breathtaking in both its life-like nature and the resulting terror it instills. Each time I turn a corner, I stop dead in my tracks: to admire not only the performance the puppeteers distill into their puppets but also the detail and texture of each one. Even more impressive is how many of these puppets change over time, evolving frightful new additions or displaying mutations growing inward out. At first, I feel like a detached observer, deeply intrigued by what’s happening without care; yet, with each interaction, a feeling of guilt grows in my gut that I’m admiring these poor creatures more as constructed art rather than living begins. Some of the humanoid puppets can speak to us, providing dire warnings and mindful messages. It leaves to wonder how often we might dismiss similar words from those struggling due to systemic class and economic reasons, ignoring them based upon appearance alone.
The space itself is equally alive throughout Harrow House. I cannot stress enough the unnerving nature of being “trapped” in the playing space designed by Lauren Nigri. Moving through Harrow House feels like being in an endless maze, always moving forward, yet forever only in circles. Additionally, Zach Moore’s sound engineering constantly sends shivers up my spine. Was the heart growing ever louder my own, something unknown just around the corner, or was the beating coming from the house itself? It’s as if Nigiri has assembled the skeleton and Moore layers on the muscle to create life, the space itself another doomed character trapped within Harrow House.
Atmospherically, Harrow House is a triumph. However, the attempt to plant seeds of narrative context throughout the experience though audio recordings and documents doesn’t work quite as well. Harrow House is cast in darkness to help mask the puppeteers dressed in black, but this created a constant struggle to read anything I found. At one point, I even saw a puppet kindly shining a light on a newspaper clipping for an older audience member. Compounding the low light are two additional issues: audience members moving around the house holding the documents and Adler snatching them up to prevent people from learning about Harrow’s true work. This meant I’d pick up the same document constantly, unearthing the same information over and over. I found the interactions with the puppets and the sensory experience of Harrow House conveyed more than enough without the need for supplemental literature.
Rough House Theatre Co.’s The Silence In Harrow House is the perfect haunted house for those who hate haunted houses. By focusing on setting and interactions rather than scare tactics, Harrow House designs a moody experience that lingers. The focus is not on the typical Halloween monsters, but rather something even more frightening: the terror of what a select few individuals are capable of when they strike all others into silence.
The Silence in Harrow House runs through November 9 at the Chopin Theatre in Chicago. Tickets are $20 — 32.
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