Inventively theatrical, hilarious and creepy, 70 SCENES OF HALLOWEEN by Jeffrey M. Wright blends realism with psychological fantasy and a dollop of grisly horror. A suburban couple sits at home on Halloween watching TV, drinking and fighting, while mysterious masked beings float through the air. Produced at the Edmonton International Fringe Festival August 12-21, 2016

Reviews

EDMONTON JOURNAL - 4 STARS
Liz Nichols

There won’t be a stranger show at the Fringe than 70 Scenes of Halloween. This trick and treat is the latest offering from Dave Horak’s Edmonton Actors Theatre, attracted as always to playful experiments with theatricality.
“Scene 1. Go!” calls the director. Later the order will be more random, 15 comes after 22, 40 is preceded by 67. And it doesn’t seem to matter much; nothing is caused and things just happen. The scene is recognizable: A living room lit by the eerie glow of the TV, a couch with a man (Clinton Carew) on it. He’s watching telly on Halloween night, hollering to his wife (Elena Porter) in the kitchen about snacks. She can’t hear him. 
This macabre and oddly mesmerizing ’90s concoction by Jeffrey M. Wright, a hit for Chicago’s Neo-Futurists, doesn’t develop. Instead it has repeating riffs. Snatches of familiar couples dialogue detach from their real-life moorings and return over and over, with adjustments and variations both minute and grotesque. Instead of “drama,” think serial jazz instead, Steve Reich or John Cage with their hypnotic loops.
Since it’s Halloween the doorbell keeps ringing (“I’ll get it!”). Candy-corn is invoked. Mysterious boxes appear on the coffee table. There’s a knife but it’s dull. One couple turns into two (Michaela Demeo and Gabriel Gagnon), identically dressed, who might be friends, or younger doubles.  
 A wolf or a witch appears at the window, or comes to the door or out of the closet. You hear “help! lemme outta here!” or “feed me!” from the closet. Ghosts float by. You hear the classic couple’s exchange “I’m in here!” “Where’s here?” as the tone edges into irritation then exasperation, then subsides into uninflected delivery in another scene. Some scenes happen in assorted types of declamatory poetry.   
It’s at the intersection of the endlessly repeating routine and the barely masked unknown that marriages unspool. Men become wolves, women witches and their partners barely notice. Hey, it’s a relationship play!
The fun of 70 Scenes is that performances from Horak’s four-member cast Dave Horak, especially Carew and Porter, establish such a convincing reality to play against. And the masks are startling.   
– Liz Nicholls

GIGCITY - 4 STARS
​Colin MacLean

You might not find much laughter in the Edmonton Actor’s Theatre production of Jeffrey M. Jones’ 70 Scenes of Halloween (BYOV 17). In fact, you might find this head-scratcher not funny at all. It turns theatre conventions on their head while presenting a quartet of recognizable characters who seem perfectly at home in a world turned upside down.
I found the play witty and inventive.
The production, directed with gleeful disregard for common sense or the time-space continuum by Dave Horak, finds Jeff (Clinton Carew) and Joan (Elena Porter) sitting  disinterestedly watching television. They carry on the sort of bored, non-communicative conversations married people often fall into. Horak, the infernal master of ceremonies shouts “Scene 2” and sets in motion a series of short events that may take place on Halloween, but are much more about Jeff and Joan. There is a new Jeff and Joan (who are really the old Jeff and Joan) played by Gabriel Gagnon and Michaela Demeo. In a classic scene of disconnected connection, as the two shout at each other from opposite ends of the house, frightful Halloween characters appear at the window. No, not kids in dress-up, but actual werewolves, ghosts and witches. Soon everything is all mixed up – creatures, couples and coherence. You might find two werewolves watching TV while a ghost dances about the room.
All the while the hypnotic voice of the demonic director interrupts the short scenes with orders to begin a new one. Some are hilarious, some poetic, one is rendered in iambic pentameter, others are quite scary. There are moments of marital bliss and one quite graphic murder. Not that the victim will stay dead.
Horak is helped considerably by the fact that his quartet of actors could read from your iPhone instruction booklet and make it sound interesting. They don’t have much time, but the real humanity they bring to the characters grounds the whole exercise in a whacked reality. The stories may be similar but the perspectives are radically askew.
All of this could come off as a humourless experiment in absurdist avant-garde, but Horak directs with a light, inventive hand and his adroit cast works to give each anecdote its own interior life.
It’s not too hard to see the entire nightmare evening as an extension of Jeff and Joan’s failing marriage.
4 out of 5

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