Scary Stories

Tamara Jones is Production Stage Manager/Operations Supervisor,
Entertainment Department, Paramount Canada’s Wonderland.

The 1950s-era comic-book artwork on the cover immediately establishes
the time and subject of Gordon Armstrong’s play. Almost half of its
pages are devoted to horror stories that surround the primary tale of a
horror/sci-fi comic-book creator’s struggle against the hysteria
generated by Joseph McCarthy in the 1950s. It is a difficult read
because it sets up a series of comic-book-style images that cannot
wholly be re-created in the mind of the reader.

The play is structured such that these comic-book creations come to
life alongside the main storyline. While I agree with Peter Hinton’s
introductory comment that “[e]ach story told within the play is
complete and satisfying unto itself,” I take issue with his suggestion
that the stories offer “a shattering profering [sic] of versions—of
a truth hidden [among the main characters].” The stories are designed
as counterpoints to the main action perhaps, but their length and
detailed nature fracture the play; they stand too much on their own to
work in such a complementary way. It is difficult to speculate on how
the staging of the play could provide a remedy; the innate theatricality
and gore-horror aspects of the stories demand a visual representation
that could easily upstage the playwright’s intentions.

The themes of censorship and artistic freedom are very transparent (on
the back cover, they are inexplicably described as “subtle
commentary”). Aside from the packaging, the ideas are not new. We
already know that reality can be far more grotesque and frightening than
any horror story.