The content warning for Vegas Theatre Company’s new horror production, Abandon, should give you a good idea of what you’re in for: “Violence, grisly images, some nudity, strong sexual themes.” And that’s before we get to the rope bondage in the lobby.
“They’re gonna walk in, and there’s gonna be kinky, sexy, naughty things going on,” says Abel Horwitz, a producer and co-writer of the show. “We want them to get a drink. We want them to get in the mood. Then we’ll bring them into the theater, and they’ll just plunge into our world.”
Loosely based on the French playwright and sexual libertine Marquis de Sade (played by Blue Man Group’s Joshua Berg), Abandon walks a line between hedonism and horror as his twisted manuscripts are brought to life inside the asylum where he is imprisoned.
Abandon is a co-production between Vegas Theatre Company and Las Vegas Horror Show, a group of immersive theater vets composed of Horwitz, executive producer and co-writer Robert Bullwinkel, andUrban Death, will find a spiritual successor in Abandon.LA-based director and co-writer Jana Wimer. Fans of Wimer’s famous LA haunt,
“I saw [Urban Death] in LA 10 years ago, and I got struck by lightning. I had never seen anything like it,” says Horwitz, who worked on 2013’s Urban Death Tour of Terror and a Paramount Studios lot production with Wimer. “The show was these wordless vignettes, where the lights go on, you’d see something crazy, and then the lights go off. I didn’t know you were allowed to do that in theater. It became very obvious I wanted to be a part of this.”
Bullwinkel, who was Wimer’s high school drama teacher, says the cult-horror show restored his faith in theater. “We were talking about bringing Urban Death to Las Vegas, but instead we wanted to custom-make something for the Las Vegas audience,” he says. “This show is kinky. It’s terrifying. It’s gross. It’s beautiful.”
But that shouldn’t discourage non-horror fans from seeing it.
“There’s a humanity to this show,” Bullwinkel says. “The audience is gonna go away having felt a connection with these characters and with their story, and with all of the crazy stuff that happens to them. I think being a horror movie buff is not at all required.”
Ahead of production, the group reached out to the Vegas theater scene to educate themselves on “what worked in this community,” Bullwinkel says. “And we really have stuck with that. Everybody we’ve hired has been local.”
Similarly to Urban Death, this show relies heavily on body language, scene setting and sound to tell its story. And with an original score by Joseph Bishara, who starred in and composed music for the Insidious and Conjuring films, and Stranger Things’ Katie Halliday on sound design, the audience is in for an elevated level of atmospheric scares.
To get it right, Wimer cribbed from a sprawling array of influences: Urban Death, John Carpenter’s The Thing, Chuck Jones’ Looney Tunes shorts and “my Catholic upbringing, probably,” she laughs. But the production is steeped in real-life horrors, too.
“People in asylums are still demonized,” Bullwinkel says. “That’s something we feel really strongly about; that we created this whole system of oppressing people and incarcerating people, not just in prisons, but in mental institutions. We’re pushing back against that in this show.”
On top of the immersive shibari pre-show in VTC’s lobby, Abandon has partnered with the area’s bars and restaurants to do pre fixe menus and custom cocktails after the show. “We really want to be a part of the fabric of Vegas,” Horwitz says.
The producer adds that they’ve invested “all-in on Vegas,” with Abandon serving as their proof of concept.
“The goal is that this becomes a permanent venue. We were developing the show before Universal Studios announced they were coming [to Area15] with Halloween Horror Nights, but ... it was the realization of ‘Oh, this is gonna be a horror city,’” Horwitz says. “There’s gonna be so many people coming to Vegas for horror year-round, and we feel we have this really beautiful little jewel box of a show and an idea that would be perfectly complementary.”
ABANDON Thru 10/14, 7 & 9 p.m. (& select dates thru 10/31), $25-$85. Vegas Theatre Company, theatre.vegas/abandon.
Click HERE to subscribe for free to the Weekly Fix, the digital edition of Las Vegas Weekly! Stay up to date with the latest on Las Vegas concerts, shows, restaurants, bars and more, sent directly to your inbox!
