Devil Land

A childless, Latino couple kidnap a young girl in order to create a family, but the little girl has ideas of her own, and when her imaginary friend, the Grinch, comes to life to help her, the couple ends up with far more than they bargained for. A dark, gothic fairy tale for the contemporary world. "New York theatergoers are mostly godless heathens, right? So how is a playwright to evoke genuine otherworldly chills in her audience? Desi Moreno-Penson's new drama, DEVIL LAND, taps into every Gothamite's primal fears by invoking the one all-powerful figure who inspires both terror and awe: the super ... this creepy drama starts off as a more or less ordinary abduction story. The childless Bronx super Americo and his straitlaced, religious wife, Beatriz, kidnap an eccentric 12-year-old neighbor and imprison her in their building's boiler room. Below the surface antics of Americo's growing lecherousness and Beatriz's punitive religiosity, however, an eerier narrative unfolds. The captive child calls upon her 'imaginary' playmate the Grinch and the ancient spirits of the Taíno Amerindians (her Puerto Rican ancestors) to keep her safe and to uncover the couple's many mysteries - like what happened to their real child. Spooky and compelling ... several interludes narrated in Seuss-like rhymed couplets are weirdly effective, the Taíno mythology is handled surely and suggestively, and the play's insistence that we make superstitions as well as sense of the world around us, even today, is spot on. You may never want to check on the boiler again - and anyway, isn't that a job for the super?" -Jessica Branch, Time Out New York "Desi Moreno-Penson's DEVIL LAND may be the scariest new play of the season. It's a modern-day gothic horror story; a thriller whose psychological elements are well-enough fleshed out to be both credible and authentically disturbing. It's a unique evening of theater ..." -Martin Denton, NYTheatre.com