“In the Dark” Lights Up with Fear

Inspired by the “The Shining,” the Harvard-Radcliffe Dramatic Club production “In the Dark” seeks to explore violence on both a concrete and abstract level to illustrate how violent actions can simultaneously bring a family closer together and tear it apart. The play centers around two siblings, Eve (Taylor K. Phillips ’15) and Zade (Matthew J. Bialo ’15), who flee to a dark, dangerous forest after seeing their father commit murder; the two become inextricably linked as their reality deteriorates.

The challenges of adapting thematic elements of a film to the stage and the ensuing narrative differences between the two versions is a source of fascination for writer and director Matt S. Kane ’15. “I wanted to see what happens when you take a movie about someone going insane and chasing people and put it into a theatrical play,” Krane says. “Although a play cannot have chase scenes, it can have the fear of someone chasing you and the fear of an environment that starts to come to life.”

Moreover, the idea of fear, the occult, and mystical are fundamental themes in the plot and serves as catalysts for the play’s multifaceted characters. “I like the different levels Eve goes through. She gets to experience everything really fully without trying to hold anything back. It is interesting to be the skeptical one and to be the one who is allowed to be scared,” Phillips says.

Each character’s experience with fear manifests itself in different ways. Eve must deal with her own mental demons, and this fear clashes with the more logical and grounded character, Zade, whose tough exterior crumbles in the face of instability. Zade’s anxiety about loss of control results in aggression as the two slowly break down.  “My favorite aspect about the part is that he loses control and reacts incredibly violently and ends up channeling his evil father’s personality into his own,” Bialo says.

As the lines between reality and imagination blur, “In the Dark” is bound to be a mind-bender.