Why aren't there more horror-themed plays on Broadway?

I agree. There have been musicals, but we don't see plays like Dracula anymore. Thrillers like Wait Until Dark and Deathtrap are produced regularly, but horrors are in short supply. They tried to do The Exorcist a couple years ago. The only thing horrifying about it was that they cast Brooke Shields as the mom. In many cases, I think it's difficult to get behind the antagonists in horror stories. That's probably the trickiest part of producing something with audience appeal.

My goal in life has always been to write a horror play that can work on stage. I've thought long and hard about it for a very long time and I just don't think actual "horror" as we know it can work on stage. When we think of horror, we usually think of movies and if we think of it in terms of that, there are so many variables that come into play as to what scares us. There is suspense (which can and has been done in theater, using the examples mentioned above) but music, jump cuts, sudden things jumping out (which is scary in large part due to editing) aren't something that can really be done live. And if they are tried, imagine sitting in the back of a broadway house watching that - it's not very scary and that's another part of what makes horror so scary in films - is that it's right there in our face either on a huge movie screen or on a TV only a couple feet away from us.

I don't think it's something that could ever or will ever translate to the stage unless it's done in an extremely intimate setting in a theater that's no more than 6-7 rows deep. I think even The Circle In The Square is too large for that genre to read well.

Updated On: 9/20/14 at 02:46 PM

I have to agree that it's nearly impossible to create the sense of "horror" we associate with film on stage. I do wish there were more really good stage mysteries though.

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It's an interesting theater discussion if the idea doesn't have to hinge on "Broadway".

Of course there's the issue of suspension of disbelief. Horror movie audiences often laugh at scenes because they "look so fake". So nowadays it might be a hard sell to get audiences to engage imaginatively with horror scenes.

One of the most chilling productions I ever saw was the great Propeller troupe's "Richard III" done in the style of the Grand Guignol, the famous French theater that did "realistic" horror shows. I'll never forget that production, because I was in an audience willing to just go with it.


Propeller's Richard III

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Does "The Woman In Black" count as horror?

That's been running for years on the West End.

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Wouldn't Shockhead Peter and Play Dead qualify?

Horror in our time has become more about gore than suspense. (I used to be a huge fan and grew up on Hitchcock, but I can't find the entertainment value in the "torture porn" that dominates our culture today. Watching a pretty blonde plead for her life for 5 minutes gives me no pleasure.)

Films do gore better, as other have implied above.

DRACULA was sui generis, as much a comedy as a horror play. (A brilliant tango between the two, done perfectly.)

WAIT UNTIL DARK and DEATHTRAP were all about the suspense (the actual violence confined to brief moments at the ends of acts). I don't think contemporary audiences are that patient.

Back in the 1980s, I directed a couple of plays at a theater in Chelsea devoted to the horror/suspense genre. Our audiences were all elderly, even then.

That Gorey-designed production of Dracula was campy and sexy and visually fun but a far far cry from anything I would call horror. I wish I had seen Peter Brook's original MARAT-SADE back in '65, which might have approached what the OP is asking about.

I think SWEENEY TODD has come closest in all my years of show-going to that jump-in-the-throat sickening feeling of true horror. And you know why? Not because of the razors and blood and gore. But because of that damn lunch whistle! Jumped out of my seat every time it went off the first time I saw the show in previews at the Uris. And good for them to find a perfect aural counterpoint to true horror. It'll take a brilliant writer and/or director to top what Sondheim/Wheeler/Prince pulled off back in '79.

There was recently a show called BLOOD PLAY at Under The Radar a few years ago that probably ranks as the scariest theatre experience of my life. I really wish that show could get a larger production, as it was exhilarating. I also found THE VISIT and CABARET to be scary in how intense they were.

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Have yet to see any horror themed play that really worked.
For example, I saw The Woman in Black last year in London and found it completely non-threatening, even though I am prone to get very spooked by horror and ghost stories. They were able to use loud noises to generate jump scares, but that was about it.

Maybe it's a problem of distance and perspective. With film, I always feel like I'm near enough to the "horror" to sense danger, but the theater doesn't really support that as well.

I think there has to be murder as well as suspense involved for it to be considered horror. Phantom of the Opera is a great example of the horror genre on stage.

Not on Broadway but there was the highly successful Evil Dead the Musical and the less so Toxic Advenger at New World Stages. I think for horror to work it has to be in a smaller venue. I would love to see a top notch theatrical production of Turn of the Screw.

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