A couple gets in a car crash and enters a house in the mountains.  The floors and walls are stuffed with objects: jars, photographs, bones, dolls, a tapestry that looks like animal guts.  Henry (Paul Sparks) has a broken ankle, but he still clocks the ambiance: “I’ve seen this.  All this.  I’ve seen this movie.”  What happens?  “We don’t make it.”

The house is also stuffed with children, all but one girls, who are parented by a single, stone-faced adult (Laurie Metcalf).  The children are intelligent, blunt, and prone to creepy statements like “We like the way you’re built … Your body.  It’s built in a way we like.”  A once-in-a-lifetime storm keeps Henry and his wife, Max (Claire Karpen, understudying for Tatiana Maslany at the performance I attended), trapped inside.  Henry, who they all insist on calling Hank, is plied with moonshine and spends much of the time passed out on the couch.  Max is interrogated.  The walls keep making noises.  The effect is something like Peter Pan and the Lost Boys living in a haunted house.

Levi Holloway’s Grey House is being marketed as a horror play, and there are a few jump scares here, a few moments where loud noises are followed by blackouts.  Still, the tone is closer to Harold Pinter or Sam Shepard—unease is the abiding feeling rather than terror—as Henry and Max are forced to confront their own ghosts and the traumas that inform their marriage.  This is something of a disappointment, since such thematic concerns are addressed ad nauseam in American theater.  A shame: I’d love to see a good horror play.

Grey House runs through July 30th at the Lyceum Theatre.  149 W. 45th Street  New York, NY.  1 hour 40 minutes.  No intermission. Photograph by MurphyMade.