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Playwright Adam Rapp delivers a horror show set in a dystopian Manhattan

BY MICHAEL SOMMERS

NEWJERSEYNEWSROOM.COM

OFF BROADWAY REVIEW

Adam Rapp has delivered a couple of satisfying plays like “Red Light Winter” and “Nocturne” and a few other interestingly weird ones, but lately he has been unleashing pointless exercises in nastiness like “The Hallway Trilogy” and “Dreams of Flying Dreams of Falling.”

Premiering on Thursday at Rattlestick Theater, “Through the Yellow Hour” finds Rapp mucking around again with even more ugly goings. Get ready for another nightmare study of a dystopian world.

Set in an East Village apartment in the near future, the situation centers on Ellen (Hani Furstenberg), a young woman who shoots an intruder (Brian Mendes) during the first few minutes and then reluctantly gives refuge to Maude (Danielle Slavick), who barters her infant for a temporarily safe haven.

In their conversations, we learn that a deadly virus has been raging as part of some sort of civil war that sees executions in Union Square and the wholesale castration of men. Outside, gunfire and explosions ceaselessly rattle these battered women tensely barricaded inside the wrecked apartment.

A maimed visitor (Alok Tewari) later informs Ellen about the fate of her long-missing husband. In the final scene of the 100-minute piece, two well-dressed strangers (Joanne Tucker and Matt Pilieci) turn up with a dazed youth (Vladimir Versailles) who possibly represents Ellen’s future.

Or something like that. It’s hard to figure out what Rapp is driving at thematically – if anywhere -- in this fairly excruciating ride into a new Dark Ages. Glints of pretty writing contrast against the story’s filthy, blood-spattered, corpse-in-the-corner circumstances, but otherwise Rapp provides a worthless horror show. The great Caryl Churchill and the late Sarah Kane depict such apocalyptic doings with much more meaningful artistry in works like “Far Away” and “Blasted.”