By Chris Peterson
I rewatched Late Night with the Devil around Halloween and, for some reason, started thinking about how it could be made into a play.
As more and more horror finds its way onto the stage (Stranger Things: The First Shadow, Paranormal Activity), I’d love to see more producers bring the genre of horror to the stage as well. The Woman in Black has been scaring audiences for decades now, and I think there’s a real appetite for more horror on stage.
Late Night with the Devil could be a really great stage show. It’s the story of a late-night host who’s struggling for ratings and decides to do a Halloween broadcast with a supposedly possessed girl on the show. Obviously, things go horribly wrong.
The obvious opportunity is sitting right there: make us the studio audience.
Get a warm-up act to get the audience going, have an applause sign, bring out Jack to do his monologue and introduce his guests and get the audience used to being in the studio for a television taping. I’d want to be having a good time for a while before things started to go horribly wrong for Jack.
And during the commercial breaks, when the host drops his smile and someone from the crew runs up to him, we the audience are sitting there in the studio, watching something that is probably not meant for our eyes.
There are some special effects used in the film that would be challenging to reproduce on stage, but there are plenty of other things to work with in the meantime. What about the voice coming from somewhere it shouldn’t? Or the actor who holds a look for just a second too long? Or something moving behind the guest’s back while the host is talking? All of these things could be done before the special effects are even introduced.
At the core of the show, there’s the desperation of a man who is trying to keep the broadcast on air when he should be pulling the plug. It’s a great role for an actor.
I’d buy a ticket to that in a heartbeat.