THEATER REVIEW : Overlong ‘Boo!’ Dissipates Ghostly Chills

It was a dark and stormy night at Pacific Resident Theatre Ensemble. “Boo! An Evening of Ghost Stories” was opening.

The place looked perfect for a Halloween party. The audience entered through a crypt, and sat on four sides of a cemetery, with plenty of spider webs and treacherous looking vines dangling from the sides of the Bob Schulenberg-designed space. Creepy music and sound effects (credit Lucas Richman and Ruth Judkowitz, respectively) and the introduction of the cast evoked a few chills.

But that was as scary as it got. Most of the 2 1/2 hours, conceived by Daniel O’Connor, disappointed.

The highlight of the first act was the simplest of the pieces, a witty little monologue by O’Connor and Anthony Moyer, in which a widow (Marcia Firesten) contemplated the ashes of her murdered husband. The same writers also contributed a couple of larger stories. But the one about a fortuneteller’s murder wasn’t polished, and the one about the devil possessing a group of nuns was fun but too formulaic to frighten.

We entered a woman’s bad dream in “Scarlet Ribbon” and saw a hospital-from-hell sketch that was like an old vaudeville routine: These were quickly forgettable. Cynthia Lee’s turgid scene about Edgar Allen Poe was the pits.

After intermission, David Lindsey’s interesting idea--about a Jamaican slave who turns her not-quite-dead master into a zombie who does her bidding--needed more breathing room than it got here. Sharron Shayne did a brief bit as Kitty Menendez.

Wayne Lindberg’s “Horror Movie,” a succession of quick scenes about the shooting of a slasher flick, was the funniest and slickest piece on the program. As directed by Alec Doyle, the horror snuck up on the audience, rather than being advertised in advance.

“Madeline,” about a haunted therapy session, showed promise but was too sedate for such a late spot on the program. Matt McKenzie’s “We Accuse” injected a bit of political awareness in its account of the torturing of a strangely impervious junta victim. It ended the evening on an appropriately somber note, but it was too late; the whole program should be further pruned for its post-Halloween run.

* “Boo! An Evening of Ghost Stories,” PRTE, 8780 Venice Blvd., Los Angeles. Thursdays-Sundays, 8 p.m. Ends Nov. 21. $15. (213) 660-8587. Running time: 2 hours, 35 minutes.