Evening prayers in Mama’s house, in York Walker’s Covenant: Jade Payton as Avery (right), Crystal Dickinson as Mama (center), and Ashley N. Hildreth as Avery’s younger sister, Violet.
Audience noise is usually a nuisance in the theater: pinging smartphones, the rustling of bags, hacking coughs. York Walker’s Gothic horror play Covenant, however, elicited the more gratifying sounds of audience shrieks and gasps. Wonderfully inventive staging in the tiny Roundabout Underground space and a first-rate ensemble allow shocks and scares to flourish, mostly overcoming some lapses in the writing or plot twists that might not withstand too much scrutiny. Under Tiffany Nichole Greene’s direction, Covenant is genuinely scary, and that it achieves this for an audience inundated with high-budget, digital effects–driven entertainment is a testament to the theatrical craft on display.
Walker uses the legend of bluesman Robert Johnson, alleged to have sold his soul to the devil for preternatural guitar-playing skills, as a springboard for his tale: Johnny “Honeycomb” James (Chaundre Hall-Broomfield) returns home to a small Georgia town in 1936, having shed the stammer that formerly plagued him and possessing musical ability that was not evident two years before. Rumor abounds that he was spotted in the cemetery at night shortly before he left, presumably hashing out a pact with Satan.
Johnny “Honeycomb” James (Chaundre Hall-Broomfield), rumored to have a deal with the devil, returns after a two-year absence to see Avery.
Johnny seeks out Avery (Jade Payton), an intelligent and beautiful young woman with whom he has been in love since childhood. Avery resides with her mother (Crystal Dickinson), who lives by the rules of a stern, old-time religion—“You in a house of God with an instrument of the enemy. Unless they started playin’ the guitar during service on Sunday mornin’,” Mama says after coming upon Johnny—and her younger sister, Violet (Ashley N. Hildreth), who is heartbreakingly unloved by Mama through no fault of her own. Like a sister to Violet, and seemingly pining for Johnny herself, is Ruthie (Lark White), who delivers an opening monologue that purports to be about “everybody” having secrets but clearly speaks to Ruthie’s own hidden desires.
The burden of the community’s religion on the lives of the young is exemplified by Lawrence E. Moten III’s set design of church windows and a wooden cross, with a table that can look like an altar or serve as the dining table in Mama’s home, the cross being appropriate to both settings. Whatever the location of the action in Covenant, the set is a reminder that religion and superstition loom large.
“The actors have mastered the art of the blood-curdling scream.”
Given this, Avery’s decision to buck her mother’s piousness and abscond with Johnny is a radical one. When the couple returns they are married, but Avery has changed from the sweet and bright young woman of the opening scenes into someone unrecognizable, supposedly the victim of a horse’s kick to the head. Mama thinks she suffers from demonic possession, while the more rational Violet suspects that Avery is the victim of Johnny’s violence. In these divergent interpretations lies the primary tension of the play as it proceeds to examine the fallout from Avery’s transformation and what it actually means, culminating in a series of twists that shouldn’t be spoiled.
Covenant plays with the idea of the supernatural as something lurking around us, the devil incarnate just beyond the creaking doorway, and as superstition that should be dismissed. As Violet says to Ruthie at a moment of conflict between them:
You wanna know the real truth about God and the devil? ... It’s all a lie. There ain’t no God and there ain’t no devil. All the pain and misery and evil in this world don’t come from hell. It come from and two-bit guitar-playin’ bastards like Johnny and liars like you.
Avery contends with her stern mother at supper. Photographs by Joan Marcus.
While the play seems to want to have it both ways, it is the supernatural potential that initiates much of the brilliantly executed horror sequences: Cha See’s lighting design, Justin Ellington’s original music and sound design, Moten’s set design, and Steve Cuiffo’s illusions combine in perfect harmony to help create those audience gasps. In addition, the actors have mastered the art of the blood-curdling scream, particularly Lark White, whose performance as the tortured Ruthie leaves an indelible mark. This is despite the play’s cumbersome monologues, when each character tells a story (“I heard a story once”) that is actually a lens into his or her own trauma. Unfortunately, these stilted speeches don’t add the weight they seem designed to and instead halt the narrative momentum.
But when Covenant is operating in the horror vein, teasing the audience with the prospect of the literally demonic versus human-made tragedies, it is exhilarating as low-key spectacle and expert craftsmanship on the smallest of stages. Please silence your cell phone, but don’t worry if you feel the need to shriek.
York Walker’s Covenant runs through Dec. 17 at Roundabout’s Black Box Theatre (11 W 46th St.). Evening performances are Tuesday through Saturday at 7:30 p.m.; matinees are Saturday and Sunday at 1:30 p.m. For tickets, visit roundabouttheatre.org.
Playwright: York Walker
Director: Tiffany Nichole Greene
Sets: Lawrence E. Moten III
Costumes: Ari Fulton
Lighting: Cha See
Original Music and Sound Design: Justin Ellington
Illusions: Steve Cuiffo
