Kill Me at WildClaw Theatre | Theater review

Kill Me at WildClaw Theatre

Photo: courtesy of WildClaw Theatre

When Cam (Sasha Gioppo) awakes from a coma after surviving a car accident, she tells her girlfriend Grace (Michaela Petro) and her sister Wendy (Casey Cunningham) that she believes she spent the week she was unconscious in hell. What’s more, the formerly fragile woman is now convinced she can’t die—a hypothesis she proceeds to test, much to Grace and Wendy’s horror, by jumping out of third-story windows and drinking antifreeze.

Scott T. Barsotti’s new one-act splits first-person narration between Wendy, a psychologist who thinks Cam resents her protectiveness, and Grace, who harbors guilt over her belief that the car accident was her fault. Barsotti also includes four other characters: Cam’s demons, named Paranoia, Dread, Angst and Despair. Intriguingly, the playwright leaves it an open question whether or not these four horsemen of mental illness are the actual, supernatural demons Cam believes them to be; their effect on the three women’s lives is horrid regardless. If the script peters out abruptly to an unsatisfying Twilight Zone conclusion, Jeff Christian’s atmospheric staging features strong acting as well as creeptastic use of a repurposed piano soundboard.