THE STORY: THE MYSTERY PLAYS is two interrelated one acts, loosely based on the tradition of the medieval mystery plays.
In the first play, THE FILMMAKER’S MYSTERY, Joe Manning, a director of horror films, survives a terrible train wreck—only to be haunted by the ghost of Nathan West, one of the passengers who didn’t survive. As the police investigate Joe, he investigates Nathan, desperate to understand why he survived and what Nathan’s specter could possible want.
In the second play, GHOST CHILDREN, Joe’s attorney and friend, Abby Gilly, travels to a small town in rural Oregon to make peace with the man who brutally murdered her parents and younger sister sixteen years earlier. The man—the murderer—is her older brother.
Like the original medieval mystery plays, THE MYSTERY PLAYS wrestles with the most profound of human ideas: the mysteries of death, the afterlife, religion, faith, and forgiveness—in a uniquely American way.
“…stylish, spine-tingling…Mr. Aguirre-Sacasa uses standard tricks of horror stories, borrowing liberally from masters like Kafka, Lovecraft, Hitchcock…But his mastery of the genre is his own…irresistible.” —The New York Times.
“Undaunted by the special-effects limitations of theatre, playwright and Marvel comic-book writer Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa maps out some creepy twilight zones in THE MYSTERY PLAYS, an engaging, related pair of one acts…The theatre may rarely deliver shocks equivalent to, say, Dawn of the Dead, but Aguirre-Sacasa’s work is fine compensation.” —Time Out New York.
“…there is much to admire in this meeting of Lovecraft’s tales from the dark side and Truman Capote’s In Cold Blood.” —Hartford Courant.
“…the first of the two stories, THE FILMMAKER’S MYSTERY, is…a dandy narrative, full of offbeat characters, I-see-dead-people creepiness and a twist or two.” —Variety.
