cover photo by Ryan Kravetz
“New York theatergoers are
mostly godless heathens, right? So how is a playwright to evoke genuine
otherworldly chills in her audience? Desi Moreno-Penson’s new drama, DEVIL LAND,
taps into every Gothamite’s primal fears by invoking the one all-powerful figure
who inspires both terror and awe: the super.
…this creepy drama starts off as a more or
less ordinary abduction story. The childless Bronx super Americo and his
straitlaced, religious wife, Beatriz, kidnap an eccentric 12-year-old neighbor
and imprison her in their building’s boiler room. Below the surface antics of
Americo’s growing lecherousness and Beatriz’s punitive religiosity, however, an
eerier narrative unfolds. The captive child calls upon her “imaginary” playmate
the Grinch and the ancient spirits of the Taíno Amerindians (her Puerto Rican
ancestors) to keep her safe and to uncover the couple’s many mysteries—like what
happened to their real child.
Spooky and compelling…several interludes narrated in Seuss-like rhymed
couplets are weirdly effective, the Taíno mythology is handled surely and
suggestively, and the play’s insistence that we make superstitions as well as
sense of the world around us, even today, is spot on. You may never want to
check on the boiler again—and anyway, isn’t that a job for the super?”
Jessica Branch, Time Out New York
“Desi Moreno-Penson's
DEVIL LAND may be the scariest new play of the season. It's a
modern-day gothic horror story; a thriller whose psychological elements are
well-enough fleshed out to be both credible and authentically disturbing. It's a
unique evening of theater….”
Martin Denton, NYTheatre.com
first produced at Summer Play Festival, New York
1 M, 2 F
I S B N 978-0-88145-514-4
$14.95