Ghost sightings in the theater usually mean Henrik Ibsen or a despondent Danish prince. A total fleece, in other words, if you’re a kid or can still think like one. But “Paranormal Activity,” an itinerant amusement at Shakespeare Theatre Company’s Harman Hall that’s as much a carnival-style haunted house as a domestic drama about a troubled marriage, will give even the most lizard-brained aesthetes among us their money’s worth and then some. If you’re game to have your soul harrow’d up and yer young blood froze by something other than the news, you are invited.
The stage attraction, written by Levi Holloway and directed by Punchdrunk Theatre founder Felix Barrett, premiered at England’s Leeds Playhouse in the summer of 2024; its U.S. tour kicked off in Chicago this past fall, concurrent with the English production’s graduation to the West End. (Holloway has a separate credit as the road show’s “restager.”) Though evidently set in the same fictional world as the seven-deep “Paranormal Activity” scary-movie franchise, the show does not demand, or particularly reward, any familiarity with the films as it works its spooky will upon you.
Our protagonists/victims are Lou (Cher Álvarez) and James (Travis A. Knight), attractive young professionals who at first glance seem more upwardly mobile than damned to the depths. The couple has relocated to a London suburb from Chicago, where some vague demonic unpleasantness went down. Married just a year, their relationship is already strained by James’s difficulty reconciling Lou’s history of supernatural harassment with her formally diagnosed mental illness — the only rational explanation, in his view, for the walking blackouts and other, crueler torments she claims to have experienced. “I don’t want to do this begging-to-be-believed thing,” she pleads.
As with all the most trenchant horror stories, this one is rooted in traumas and trials that are utterly prosaic. How well do we really know our partners? Is it possession that robs us of our agency, or just plain-vanilla depression? James’s overbearing mother (a superb Shannon Cochran), video calling in from Boca Raton to demand a grandchild at regular intervals, is no comfort. “In my day, the only prescription for the blues was prayer,” she sighs, worrying that Lou’s meds could stymie the couple’s attempts to conceive. Hamlet’s dad’s ghost gave better pep talks than this flesh-and-blood holy terror.
Of course, the Singers’ problems are more than just familial in nature. One bedroom of their rental home sprouts mysterious numbers all over the walls. Gas stove burners twist themselves on. Burglar alarms and smart TVs interject at eye-watering volume. There’s enough door-slamming to power a season of farces, but with an invisible hand doing the slamming. (The illusions designer is Chris Fisher, and autonomous doors are the least of his eerie miracles.)
It isn’t spoiling things to say that even that skeptic James becomes sufficiently rattled by all of this to call in a proper English ghostbuster by the proper English name of Mrs. Cotgrave (Katie Fry, making a banquet of her compact role).
As with even the best horror films, the show’s visceral delights tend to overpower any misguided attempt at dramaturgic scrutiny. Why, for example, do the Singers stay in a house they both come to believe is infested by an evil presence? We can infer this malevolent spirit has sapped their will to escape, but Lou and James appear to retain their resolve elsewhere. The devil works in mysterious ways, I guess.
Scenic and costume designer Fly Davis’s ant-farm-style cutaway set of the Singers’ two-story house is a marvel, the formal inverse of the household surveillance-cam milieu of the original “Paranormal Activity” movie. Far more than most stage shows extrapolated from material previously adapted for cinema, this one invites us to contemplate the differences in these two mediums. A filmmaker has absolute control over what we see, choosing where to put their camera, which lens to use, how to light their subject, and the duration of each shot. Theatre gives a director fewer tools: They can illuminate only the parts of the stage where they wish to guide our eyes, but they can’t stop us from gazing into the murky depths if we want.
“Paranormal Activity” is the kind of diversion that will have you anxiously scanning those unlit corners for a glimpse of the uncanny.
Paranormal Activity, through Feb. 7 at the Shakespeare Theatre Company’s Harman Hall. About two hours including an intermission. shakespearedc.org.
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