'Paranormal Activity' Scares Broadway in Stage Debut
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- Levi Holloway's Paranormal Activity opened at Broadway's August Wilson Theatre in a 2-hour-10-minute run directed by Punchdrunk founder Felix Barrett, with Broadway newcomers Cher Álvarez (as Lou) and Travis A. Knight (as James) leading the cast.
- The play is based in spirit on the Paramount Pictures franchise rather than its plot, following a young Chicago couple whose relocation is shadowed by Lou's history of unexplained black-outs and "lost time."
- Eva Kaminsky plays spiritualist Etheline Cotgrave and Shannon Cochran plays James' Southern Christian evangelical mother Carolanne — a name the reviewer flags as a deliberate nod to Poltergeist's "they're heeere" Carol Anne.
- The creative team — illusionist Chris Fisher, lighting designer Anna Watson, sound designer Gareth Fry, and set designer Fly Davis (whose two-tiered London flat keeps upstairs bedrooms always visible) — adapts cinematic scares like slamming doors, flickering lamps, and glitchy TVs into theatrical-only effects.
- The script leans on the "young wife who might be haunted or maybe just unbalanced" trope, name-checking Gaslight, Rosemary's Baby, and Let's Scare Jessica to Death, with Holloway's 2019 Grey House framed by the reviewer as "a practice run" for this production.
Why it matters: The production positions Holloway, Barrett, and first-time Broadway leads Álvarez and Knight as fresh horror voices, while giving the August Wilson Theatre a fall-season commercial horror offering in a genre Broadway rarely stages.
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