Unnatural acts Running Over camps out in the Grange BY MEGAN GRUMBLING
	MANIAC + THE BRAIN THAT WOULDN’T DIE Adapted and directed by Joshua Douglas and Will Stewart | Produced by Running Over Productions | at the Presumpscot Grange Hall, in Portland | through Nov 5 | 207.653.8898

"The essence of Camp is its love of the unnatural," wrote Susan Sontag in 1964, in her attempt to pinpoint exactly what it is we so tongue-in-cheekily adore about phenomena like Plan Nine from Outer Space, Flash Gordon, and The National Enquirer. By "unnatural" she meant less "freakish" than "hyper-theatrical." She wasn’t necessarily talking about such things as the mutant human sewn together of corpse limbs or the disembodied talking head of Running Over Productions’ Creature Double Feature. Rather, she was talking about the particular quality of, say, the deranged laugh that is the recurring motif of Maniac and The Brain that Wouldn’t Die — exaggerated, giddy with artifice.

Yes, there is precious little verisimilitude to be found in the Presumpscot Grange Hall during this run, and, in a show that brings to the stage two B-grade horror flicks of old, that’s just as it should be. Directors Joshua Douglas and Will Stewart’s CDF, which they’ve adapted themselves from the original screenplays, is theater of utter, conscious, over-the-top stylization, of shameless hamming, mugging, and shrieking.

In Maniac, Ariel Francoeur’s manic and excessively German Dr. Meirschultz is up to some bad shit involving reanimation formulas and stolen corpses, and her demonic laugh soars well beyond any suspension of disbelief. When she is disposed of by her vaudevillian escapee assistant Maxine (the intense-eyed Crystal Vaccaro, most recently of Lenny), that laugh lives on and grows even more schizoid in her underling’s impersonations of her, as Maxine attempts to carry on her boss’s unnatural work. Meirschultz/Maxine’s counterpart in The Brain that Wouldn’t Die is young Dr. Bill Cortner (the ubiquitous and versatile Keith Anctil), who’s handsome and ambitious but who has secretly been pushing the envelope of the Hippocratic Oath with questionable grafting procedures and materials. When his fiancée Jan (Jana Regan, of shrill laugh and shapely skull) is injured in a car crash, Bill manages to save her head for later, as it were.

Running Over has shifted its focus to include not just gory prostheses, but also kooky audio-visual accoutrements. Jesse Leighton on lighting and Ian Lindley on sound have made this show at times feel as much like a camped-out Happening as a horror showcase. In Maniac, scenes on stage alternate with both a straight-jacketed Mike Best’s spookily tender definitions of dementia and a blue-grey video projection of dancing creatures and jerky satyrs. It’s rich stuff, and weird.

The Presumpscot Grange Hall is of course no Equity house, and Running Over’s lack of presumption and polish is part of its appeal — enough so that you can overlook a little dragged pacing and a dropped line or two. A bigger problem is keeping everybody on the same page when it comes to the precise dosage of campiness onstage. For the most part, these casts keep that stylized exaggeration at a sustained level, but when it does flag, it takes some comic momentum with it.

That said, there are some excellent hams amongst these actors, most notably Anctil, Francoeur, and Vaccaro, who have great timing and a fine sense of the camp sensibility. There’s also fun supporting character work — look for Kathryn Morrison in a brief turn as a sweeping woman, Jason Winchester as Maxine’s estranged husband, and Harris Cooley as the bizarre and deadpan "Catman." Douglas and Stewart give everyone kinetic and quite masterful use of the Grange’s stage and its environs, moving frequently from the stage, through a door, out onto the floor, and up upon an extended platform.

All in all, CDF at the Presumpscot Grange Hall is a site-specific banquet of camp. "Camp is generous," Sontag wrote. "It wants to enjoy." In the enthusiastic grafting together of all its weird ingredients — classic horror tropes, video installation, a great soundtrack that includes renditions of "Harlem Nocturne" and "Fever," sweet Grange ladies in the basement with four kinds of pie — the unique institution of Running Over Productions once again offers us a lot to like.

Megan Grumbling can be reached at mgrumbling@hotmail.com