SALT LAKE CITY, Utah, Sept. 28, 2022 (Gephardt Daily) — “An intense feeling of fear, shock, or disgust,” is the definition of horror. It’s rather curious to me that horror as a genre has been persistently a favorite across a variety of media; most notably in film and literature. Recently as well, there has been a never-ending parade of horror-themed television shows, from “American Horror Story” to “The Walking Dead.”
But horror is not an extensively explored genre in theater. Of course, many plays have moments or scenes that are dark or macabre, but there are not many full pieces that can be described as “horror plays.”
In Steve Yockey’s case in “Sleeping Giant,” the horrific elements are also cut with a generous sprinkling of comedy, as was also the case in his last world premiere show at Salt Lake Acting Company, 2017’s “Mercury.” Yockey, by the way, is also the multi-award-nominated creator of the popular HBO Max series “The Flight Attendant.”
“Sleeping Giant,” also a world premiere, is playing at SLAC through Oct. 16. The new work, which previously received a reading through SLAC’s New Play Sounding Series in May 2022, is described as follows: “When a firework-filled marriage proposal goes very wrong, the accompanying explosions wake up something very old that’s been sleeping in the nearby lake for thousands of years. What follows are intimate, darkly comic, and sometimes startling vignettes about the lengths people go when they desperately want something to believe in.”
The play is made up of a series of vignettes which on the surface seem relatively banal, or at least not out of the ordinary; the afore-mentioned marriage proposal, two friends preparing to go to brunch, an avid baker inviting a pair of guests into her home for cake, the admission of an affair to a partner, a conversation between three friends about how much one of them is “glowing” and why that might be. But we quickly realize that there is a sinister undertone to these scenes, and it is the phenomenon of what is occurring at and in the lake that links the characters. There are numerous references to the fact that the characters are desperately trying not to acknowledge the pervading and encroaching sense of doom (welcome to 2022!); one couple mentions that they stopped watching the news because of how depressing it has become, and others point fingers at each other, believing individuals are under the influence or suffering from mental issues when they speak about the phenomenon in the lake.
Yockey masterfully ensures that each time we get comfortable watching a vignette, unfolding not unlike an episode of a soap opera, it is cut with jarring, other-worldly moments that will make your skin crawl and possibly haunt your dreams. And as the play goes on, these moments tumble forth more and more regularly, as the stage directions say, they “loom and grow” until it’s impossible for the characters, and the audience for that matter, to escape.
It’s a great credit to the cast of four, as well as directors Emilio Casillas and Shawn Francis Saunders, that they manage to make the realism in the play totally convincing; almost soothing; but they also seamlessly slide into the surreal, and when they do, it’s terrifying. All the actors have a heavy load; Robert Scott-Smith and Cassandra Stokes-Wylie play four characters each, while Lily Hye Soo Dixon and Tito Livas play five. The costumes by Bett Shouse change only a little, so it’s in the hands of the actors to help us differentiate between all the characters we meet in rapid succession (the action careers forward relentlessly with only minor changes to the set to depict a new scene); but they do so beautifully. Smith, particularly, morphs utterly into each new character, from a well-meaning fiance to a hillbilly that inexplicably uses archaic language.
Huge credit, too, must go to the production team. Yockey is the master of hard-to-achieve stage directions; an example being: “A Zealot enters carrying a large, woven basket. It might have blood dripping from inside.” Scenic designer Halee Rasmussen along with props designer Erik Reichert and projection designer Michael Francis successfully differentiate between the different homes depicted in the script with small details, but also make the parts in the play that call for dramatic surrealism truly jaw-dropping. The lighting by Jessica Greenberg and sound design by Cynthia L. Kehr Rees also work to make these moments absolutely sinister. It is the most visually satisfying show I have seen in a long time.
The real genius of this 80-minute gem of a play is that what the sleeping giant represents can be interpreted very differently depending on the individual. Is it fascism or another political movement? Is it religion? Is it climate change or mob mentality? I believe it is Yockey’s intention to make the fear nebulous; the characters don’t know exactly what they are afraid of, only that they are afraid, and this seeps over into the audience as we realize that in the modern world, there are so many things to be frightened of that they all can knit together into an overarching dread. Or, on the other hand, maybe there’s actually nothing in the lake at all, and what the characters actually fear, in the infamous words of Franklin D. Roosevelt, is fear itself.
Tickets to “Sleeping Giant” at SLAC, which is at 168 W. 500 North, are available by calling 801-363-7522 or visiting saltlakeactingcompany.org.
