Misery

Reviewed by Holly Bartges

Paragon Theatre Company has a major problem.

If they continue to raise the bar on the quality of their productions, there isn’t going to be any place for them to go.

Tom Borrillo and Emily Paton Davies star in Paragon Theatre Company’s production of Misery.

On the one hand it is maddening when Paragon only does three productions a year. Maddening because after each production one wants more, and it is such a long wait until the next. On the other hand, it is a good thing. During the long wait, there is the knowing Paragon works on great detail over every aspect of their productions with refined expertise.

Their detailed artistic attention stood straight, tall, and magnetic Saturday night when they opened with Stephen King’s Misery. Although Simon Moore adapted the frightening story for the stage, it is King’s story through and through.

Directed by Warren Sherrill, this production gives chills to the chills on top of creepy goose bumps. On an incredibly unique set design by David Lafont, that encompasses inside and outside with detail combined with suggestive well-placed wood structures, Misery’s story unfolds in Annie Wilkes out of the way cabin. In a driving snowstorm, she discovers her heroic number one romance novelist, Paul Sheldon, has run his car into a ditch.

Somewhere under the many layers of sheer unadulterated evil personas lie the accomplished actors Tom Borrillo and Emily Paton Davies, who had to have gone to very far away places to piece together their characters.

So-called scary movies and plays with things that go bump in the dark while making weird sounds generally tickle my funny bone. They turn into rattled comedies rather than hold-my-breath, chew-on-my-elbows, (anything but the nails) balance-on-the- edge-of-my-chair hair-raising experiences.

Misery is a different kind of scary. Off-balance, mental and physical torture for sheer pleasure from a deranged mind is scary, and scarier now then when the story first made its way to the printed page. Scary because mental and physical torture isn’t just a figment of someone’s outlandish imagination tethered in a dark theatre behind a bag of popcorn; it’s part of our real life world so demonstrated by Iraq and the abuse of prisoners. Westword’s Theatre Critic, Juliet Wittman, brought that out into plain view during Intermission. Iraq’s prisoner abuse shines a light on man’s inhumanity to man removing any kind of scary completely out of the realm of partial funny. Mental and physical torture doesn’t recognize the fences surrounding a war.

Empathy clouds Annie’s insanity with events that fueled her twisted mind to unravel. With each tug on the thread to untangle Annie’s warped mind, Davies delivers full force. Borrillo matches each grief stricken painful throb denied of medication for long periods of time, by somehow playing her game. The human spirit captures impossible determination until needed.

Michael Andrew Doherty’s original haunting musical composition and ingenious sound effects melts the theatre into space and time. From the first eerie note, it is clear this isn’t a run-of-the-mill scary play, and far from being a run-of-the-mill scary play production.

Melissa Strasser’s deliberate lighting design stands apart, separate, yet at the same time strikingly complimentary, begging for its own name to be listed in the Cast of Characters claiming a personality of its own.

The performance is as riveting as the story. Davies instantaneous calculated uncalculated changes of mood from child-like happy giggles and clapping, to out of control rage, to frozen captivated moments carrying her to some other dimension is an actor’s dream to perform and to absorb. Borrillo’s projection of physical and mental torture and pain leaves one making sure one’s legs are still in tact, squirming for the medication as much as he does.

It’s OK. Let Paragon raise the bar. No glass ceiling exists over the Rocky Mountains. Theatre just doesn’t get any better than this.