
Family’s dark secrets spell delicious drama
By CHRIS PAGE
Get Out
Phoenix’s Nearly Naked Theatre is doing such a deliciously dark chocolate production of Wendy MacLeod’s black comedy “The House of Yes,” about halfway through a run last weekend I had a disturbing epiphany: It’s not too far of a stretch to link the Pascals — this “House’s” upper-crust clan of incest and insanity in the shadow of ’80s-era Washington, D.C. — with the psychotic, murderous family in the horror movie classic “The Texas Chainsaw Massacre.”
In “Massacre,” outsiders stumble into a ramshackle backwoods home to find corpses everywhere and a family deranged in its evil obliviousness.
The Pascals, meanwhile, have enough sense to try hiding the bodies when company comes.
Mrs. Pascal (played by Patti Davis Suarez with a grand brew of recherché and wicked wit) is in denial that her twin son and daughter, Marty (Christian Miller) and Jackie-O (Jennifer Bemis, with many moments of brilliance), have turned Jackie-O’s fascination with the John F. Kennedy assassination into an incestuous, J.G. Ballard-worthy fetish.
With that kind of thing haunting around, it’s no wonder younger son Anthony (Boyd Branch) has lost his own grip on reality.
It takes leaving for college and finding a fiancée for Marty to get a clue about his fractured family. He brings his new love (innocent young Lesly, played by Kyla Andrews) home to meet everyone, hoping to validate his discoveries. But family bonds are tougher to break than he realizes.
“The House of Yes” is a compelling play, a psychosexual Freudian field day sweetened with gobs of dark comedy. (“People raise cattle,” mother says drolly. “Children just happen.”) Nearly Naked director Damon Dering has fun with the material, as does his spirited cast.
For them, the only thing separating the Pascals from “The Texas Chainsaw Massacre’s” brood are social graces and a penchant for handguns over high-powered gardening tools. Never before have horror and comedy played such easy kissing cousins.
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