My overall impression
Distortion reveals—-darkness liberates—-hysteria serves as the foot soldier of truth. “The Creeps” forces us to confront our broken counterparts.
Talk, literally talk, to creatures that don’t exist, funneled through one woman metamorphosing into vastly different physical and psychological figures in the space of a blackout.
Catherine Waller frees these creeps from the corner of your eyes and the edges of your limbic system. In this dark comedy, you laugh as your hair stands on end, trying to escape.
Intentions turn ambiguous, reality shifts in a moment, and paradoxes dance—-when the most hospitable is the most sinister, when the most pathetic is the most noble, when the most exploited is the most in need, when the most battered is the most cruel.
Twisted by their own evil or their own need for salvation, each creep is both abuser and abused: Cast-offs, relegated/exiled to a basement of terrors where modern-day and fairy-tale detritus decay in the same heap.
Anything can happen, because the creeps can see you. You can’t hide. You’re paralyzed in your chair.
You think: I can’t become one of these creeps. I have to get out of here. I can’t be associated with them. And as they treat you as their own, you feel yourself distorting, disintegrating, becoming grotesque.
Will you listen to the evil and fall for it? Will you embrace the good, even if it is damaged, infected, deadly? Can you save anyone? Will you dare? Can you save yourself?
The creeps are isolated——they enjoy the company——but you might not be able to leave. They might keep you there forever. Indulge them, and let them mingle with your own enigmas, demons and malformations.
You will leave relieved. At least you’re not doomed, controlled, locked in eternal pain and confusion like the creeps.
Except we are. And that’s the comedy of “The Creeps.”
