Pyre - Orpheus Theatre Company

Having now seen two Orpheus Theatre Company productions, I am struck by their ability to find local performance spaces appropriate to the material. Leap, an examination of a sickly, solitary writer-theologian, was staged in a tiny church chapel. Now, Pyre -- running now through March 5 -- uses the basement of Lancaster's Historic Rock Ford barn to situate audiences within a 17th-century Scottish tailor's home almost before the show begins.

Pyre concerns a Catholic priest, a possessed woman, and a would-be witch in a time of violent religious hysteria -- but playwright and Orpheus co-founder Tyler Joseph Rossi subverts expectations of how this explosive combination of characters will play themselves out. The demons are hiding in self-preservation. The woman they possess is sincerely devout. The priest sent on a witch-hunt is all too conscious of how easily evil men use false accusations of witchcraft to their advantage.

But desperation leads to a pact with a demon; and a battlefield wound sends events spiraling with increasing intensity towards a violent conclusion.

The primary attraction of Pyre is the electric lead performances of Megan Albasi and Gianna Miranda. As the unwittingly-possessed Kitte, Miranda alternates between portraying multiple demons and the bewildered tailor they possess in a world spinning out of her control and understanding. Albasi, who plays the servant-girl Allok, combines boiling rage kept under control by an even greater sense of self-preservation. (Both wield impressive Scottish accents throughout the entire play, which contributes greatly to the immersion.)

Directors Benny Benamati and Orpheus co-founder Katherine Campbell Rossi bring a perfectly spooky and eerie atmosphere to the production, not least by giving the demons themselves corporeal form in actors Sam Shae and Caitlin Hughes. Creeping, crawling, and lurking around, Shae's and Hughes's performances are skillfully choreographed by Rossi without losing their individuality; Shae and Hughes gnaw on the scenery without detracting from the action.

Devin Palmieri and Addison Rymar round out the cast as the priest and a soldier-tailor. Speaking to me by phone, playwright Tyler Rossi told me he felt too many media portrayals of clergy are either completely saintly or totally evil; Palmieri's Fr. Rory -- an energetic performance in her own right -- is entirely human. Rymar's everyman attempts to put on a stoic face to the world even as he suffers from PTSD and provides a sense of groundedness to the production.

There is only one thing which irks me about Pyre, and I cannot tell whether it is a problem with the play or with myself: although the play is richly psychological, although it has delightful moments of gore and fright (it would be a perfect production for Halloween), I cannot provide an account of what the demons may represent. Playwright Rossi, who has written a number of period plays, sets Pyre against the historical background of Catholic-Protestant and English-Scottish tensions; but if I expected to see an allegory for the historical events reflected in the main action of the play, I was unable to identify it.

Rossi told me he wasn't sure if the historical or theological concerns of the play came first. "Can a sin be something that helps someone?" he said, referring to the central event of the play and perhaps the central question that is borne out of it--a question examined not just through words, but through blood, severed limbs, and fire. Running only 70 minutes, Pyre is a perfectly thrilling show.

Pyre is being performed Friday, Saturday, and Sunday evenings at 7:30pm at Historic Rock Ford through March 5. Performances for Saturday the 25th are sold out, but tickets for the remaining performances can be bought HERE.