It’s that time of year. The best time of year, in fact. Halloween! Our minds collectively turn to the spooky, the macabre, and specifically, ghosts with walking ghost tours popping up around town to offer a more academic, history-based take on the paranormal. But what if you want on one of these tours and something paranormal actually happened? Immersive theatre company DrownedOut Productions blends this idea with a story of Hollywood tragedy to create People In The Dark: An Immersive Ghost Story. While this is rich material to explore People In the Dark isn’t what it could be. Leaning heavily on references to the classic film Sunset Boulevard, this immersive show chooses “homage” over inspiration for its narrative resulting in a beautifully mounted but creatively spotty immersive show.
Our experience began with very clear instructions to check in at a very precise spot in an alley in Downtown Los Angeles. Here we found an inflatable ghost marking the check-in tent and friendly staff that assigned us into a group for the next available ghost tour.
Our ghost tour guide greeted our small group and took us into a nearby tent. Inside was a table at the center of the room with a map of different spots in Los Angeles known for ghost activity. After sharing our own stories with the paranormal, we set off into the streets to scope out a few key spots. As we walked we navigated past the around crowds pouring out of the Belasco theatre, we mourned the loss of the Mayan, heard a story about Dorothy Dandridge, then circled around the block to a rather nondescript store front.
It is here, at this darkened window, that our ghost guide can’t help herself and goes “off-script” to talk about a forgotten actress who ran a clothing store from this spot. The lore goes further explaining that after the advent of sound in film, her career never recovered. Despite writing her own script and tapping a celebrated director/lover to helm, the project fell apart and she lived the rest of her life in the shadow of her lost career. That’s when the ghosts of the past flicker to life inside the old store front and our guide leads us inside.
Inside the musty store we see mannequins draped in plastic and our guide goes on about the failed project and abandoned dreams. Franz Waxman’s Oscar-winning score from Sunset Boulevard plays, and soon, we are on our own. This is when the show really gets going and we are lured further into the past by way of swelling music, lighting, and dutiful actors attempting to entrance us with the romanticism of Hollywood’s golden era of film. Of course, there is a dark underbelly to the Hollywood dream and we are here for it.
It’s a story as old as the first moving pictures the thirst for fame mixed with romantic entanglements and the sad reality that sometimes dreams become nightmares. Guided through a surreal collection of scenes by our lead actress, she recounts her path to stardom and ultimate demise. Yet the writers of People In The Dark can’t help but pull bits of dialogue directly from the film they are referencing. It’s such a shame to see writing so enamored with its muse that it just takes from it.
From a technical standpoint, People In The Dark: An Immersive Ghost Story is impressive. The transition from gritty reality on a Los Angeles street to cinematic dreamworld of the past is well done. It’s a slow descent into madness that works well. The moment our star arrives in unnerving and strange as is the journey we go on thanks to the dedicated performer that holds the attention of an entire group in intimate settings. I would note that the sound levels need to me polished in these moments as the ambient score often drowned out some of the dialogue being delivered.
Creator Jackson Mancuso really tries to create something that pulls guests from reality, taking them on a journey through the netherworld of Hollywood. The concept is an intriguing one and while the execution is solid, the writing just doesn’t hold up. We are never really afraid, and we are never really mystified. We are just kind of there, the People in the Dark.
If you are looking for an immersive, no BOO scare, immersive haunt, you can Grab your tickets here.
