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This show gives 'em 'Hell'

BY ROBERT KAHN | Newsday Staff Writer

October 9, 2006

The devil resides in one of a dozen performance rooms in Les Freres Corbusier's staging of a first-ever Hell House in the NYC area. (Newsday/ Ari Mintz)

Even in New York, AIDS can be a righteous payback for being gay and hell the destination for a teenage girl who pops a morning-after pill. At least, that's the judgment of "Hell House," a fundamentalist take on the traditional haunted house that begins a three-week run in Brooklyn tomorrow.

"Hell House," rooted in an idea pioneered by the Rev. Jerry Falwell in the 1970s, is not a parody - though liberal-minded East Coast urbanites may first take it to be one.

"Hell Houses communicate the biblical truth that sin always has consequences," says Pastor Keenan Roberts, a Colorado minister who has staged more than 3,000 such productions around the country since 1993.

"We believe that abortion, adultery and homosexuality among other things are sinful behaviors and that if a person does not repent of their sin and come to Jesus Christ, then hell will be their destiny rather than heaven."

Roberts, now a minister with the New Destiny Christian Science Center in suburban Denver, staged his first such scare-show in 1993. Three years later, he began selling Hell House Outreach Kits, which include a 263-page manual covering casting, publicity and instructions for making a prop fetus. ("Do your very best to purchase a meat product that will resemble as much as possible pieces of a baby that are being placed in the glass bowl for all to see.") The kits, sold for about $300, have been marketed to churches in all 50 states and 20 foreign countries.

The version opening tomorrow at St. Ann's Warehouse in DUMBO, produced by the experimental theater company Les Freres Corbusier, marks the first time a "Hell House" has been staged in New York City. Corbusier founders Aaron Lemon-Strauss and Alex Timbers merely purchased a kit from Roberts and hired actors, meeting no objection from the pastor, who says, "the more radical the environment, the more appropriate it is to have 'Hell House' represented there.

"'Hell House' didn't find New York," Roberts says. "New York found 'Hell House.'"

More frightening than sin

The 14,000-square-foot DUMBO warehouse is divided into a dozen often bloody and frightening rooms in which nearly 100 actors enact tableaux with stark moral lessons.

As the walk-through begins, the audience meets teenage Jessica, who is attending her first rave. In short order, she is gang-raped and contemplating suicide. "Do you even know how many boys raped you tonight, Jessica?" asks a satanist who serves as tour guide. In case you miss the point, a clue to Jessica's moral character is the poster of Harry Potter above her bed. Potter just last month was tagged by a top Roman Catholic exorcist as "the king of darkness," although there is no mention of the boy wizard in Roberts' text.

Other rooms take you inside the womb of a young girl about to have an abortion; to a high school where a killing spree ensues; and to front-row center at a gay wedding. "We are gathered here today ... to make a complete and total mockery of sacred marriage vows," says Satan Jr. in his introduction.

The depictions are often graphic, none more so than the mock abortion, which includes larger-than-life forceps jabbing at a bandage-wrapped fetus.

The 45-minute walk-through ends with an evangelical rock hoedown, featuring powdered doughnuts, a performance by the fake band What About Sunday ("Check us out on MySpace - even Christians use the Internet!") and Kool-Aid ladled from a punchbowl.

During the first few days of previews, director Timbers said women walked through the penultimate "Hall of Horrors" and told the "sinners" portrayed by actors, "I'm praying for you." Timbers says, "You hope that you're attracting as diverse an audience as possible. Whether we'll convert people is a huge question, but I think they'll be changed by the experience." Roberts' outreach has drawn strong artistic responses elsewhere. His work spawned a 2001 documentary film, "Hell House," chronicling a production performed annually by youth members of a Texas church.

Two years ago, comics Sarah Silverman, Bill Maher and Penn Jillette were among the rotating cast of "Hollywood Hell House," a West Coast adaptation of the Roberts script, clearly presented as a satire. "The Bible Belt claims that Hollywood wants to [corrupt] their children," said "Six Feet Under" producer Jill Soloway, a co-director of that work. "So we're showing Hollywood what the Bible Belt shows their children."

God will have last word

That episode was somewhat troubling to Roberts, who nonetheless believes that his message won out. "'Hell House' has had many opponents over the years," he says. "This is about creating an audience for the message, and we're just messengers. I never had any question that it would survive. God will have the last word. This is his deal; it's not my deal."

Roberts and his wife traveled from Colorado last week to see how Les Freres Corbusier had reconceived his work. With a few exceptions - a pair of horny teens contemplating premarital sex "is certainly down to their Fruit-of-the-Looms more than we'd have done" - he was pleased with the presentation.

"How other people dress it up is never how you would dress up your own baby," he says. "But for a theater company from New York, those guys have done a terrific job with it."

WHEN & WHERE "Hell House" performs Tuesday through Sunday through Oct. 29, with 10 tours every night. Tours begin every 15 minutes from 7:30 to 9:45 p.m. No performances this Wednesday. Tickets $25. Visit ticketweb.com or call 718-254-8779.