Riley Elton McCarthy's horror comedy arrives in New York carrying a specific, well-worn premise — nonbinary playwright Sloane and their botanist husband Gwyn are settling the estate of Sloane's ailing grandmother when a third figure appears and the house begins to give up what it has been hiding. Director Evan Michael Woods is steering the production, which follows a successful Texas regional run and a London engagement before landing on East 9th Street.
East Village Basement is designed like a cozy living room — which is either the wrong room or exactly the right one for a play where the terror lives below the floorboards. The text takes on generational trauma, bisexuality, and trans identity through what the writer calls a horror-comedy frame, so the laughs and the dread are meant to arrive together. London reviewers found the opening act slow to ignite but noted that the second and third parts deliver — flickering lights, creaking floors, a sound design that works once the play stops padding itself. We haven't reviewed this New York staging yet, so that read travels at your own risk.
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