{"id":289837,"date":"2025-10-09T18:01:09","date_gmt":"2025-10-09T18:01:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/289837\/"},"modified":"2025-10-09T18:01:09","modified_gmt":"2025-10-09T18:01:09","slug":"alley-theatres-world-premiere-of-the-body-snatcher","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/289837\/","title":{"rendered":"Alley Theatre\u2019s World Premiere of The Body Snatcher"},"content":{"rendered":"

For a spooky play that traffics in grave robbing, fog-enshrouded nights, serious anatomy lessons, and what ethical lengths a loving father \u2013 a famous surgeon in 1899 London \u2013 would go to save his beloved daughter from dying, The Body Snatcher,<\/strong> a world premiere from Katie Forgette (Sherlock Holmes and the Case of the Jersey Lily, Alley 2023) needs more heart.<\/p>\n

Like other doctors before him (Jekyll and Frankenstein come quickly to mind), Robert Noakes (a fiercely committed David Rainey) is ahead of his time as he plays God. He needs a fresh young heart to transplant into his daughter Elizabeth (dewy Alyssa Marek) to keep her from succumbing to his wife\u2019s previous condition of \u201ccardiac inefficiency.\u201d She died young, too. As we\u2019re in the Victorian age of the \u201cresurrectionists,\u201d that shouldn\u2019t be much of a problem, just hire opportunistic Fettes (an unrecognizable Brandon Hearnsberger gleefully eating up the scenery) to snatch a body. What could go wrong?<\/p>\n

Everything, really.<\/p>\n

Awash in the Alley\u2019s munificent production provided by Yu Shibagaki\u2019s pungent set design replete with tomes, vials, anatomy charts; Pablo Santiago\u2019s gang-bang lighting; a gothic sound design (beating hearts, frightened horse whinnies, thunder claps that would have lit up the heart of Hollywood\u2019s master of horror, James Whale); and Asta Bennie Hostettter\u2019s plummy Victorian costumes with their mutton sleeves, swishing muslin dresses, and mismatched plaids, none of this is enough to counter the sketchy rom-com romance between Noake\u2019s daughter and Noake\u2019s precocious assistant Dr. John Brook (Luis Quintero, sporting the most faux mutton chops that immediately stop any romantic notions from the start.) The quick romance never ignites.\u00a0<\/p>\n

And what are we to make of obsessed Dr. Noakes? This seemingly most ethical of physicians, a paragon of science, beloved by his students, will do anything to get that heart. His standards are lower than Fettes\u2019. Where are his principles? Is this love for his daughter or love for the historic recognition he will garner from a successful operation? When he is willing to operate on his daughter while still alive, even in his misguided belief that he can save her, we tune out and lose our sympathy. He becomes his own Fettes.<\/p>\n

Act II dips into melodrama as if in a Victorian romance, culminating with Noakes entering the operating theater and addressing his students, preparing to begin a dissection. A shrouded body lies on the table. A veiled female figure sits in the background. Which woman is where?<\/p>\n

Although set ten years after the terror reign of Jack the Ripper in 1888, perhaps that thread could have be woven into Forgette\u2019s drama. Talk about a body snatcher; there was a natural.<\/p>\n

Nimbly directed by the Alley\u2019s Associate Artistic Director Brandon Weinbrenner, this world premiere while fragrant with chills fails to fully deliver. Talky at the beginning with too much exposition, it never catches the fire it promises pictorially. The heart everybody references repeatedly fails to materialize. It beats on the soundtrack, but nowhere else.<\/p>\n

A note to the author: You mention Puccini\u2019s aria from Il Trittico, \u201cO, mio babbino caro.\u201d That opera premiered in 1918, two decades later than your play.<\/p>\n

The Body Snatcher<\/strong> continues through October 26 at 7:30 p.m. Tuesdays through Thursdays, 8 p.m. Fridays and Saturdays; 2 p.m. Saturdays and Sundays; and 7 p.m. Sundays at Alley Theatre\u2019s Neuhaus Theatre, 615 Texas. For more information, call 713-220-5700 or visit alleytheatre.org. $45-$74. \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

This article appears in Jan 1 \u2013 Dec 31, 2025<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\n\tRelated<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"For a spooky play that traffics in grave robbing, fog-enshrouded nights, serious anatomy lessons, and what ethical lengths…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":289838,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5130],"tags":[69217,148770,12730,4345,35788,358,1148,3187],"class_list":{"0":"post-289837","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-houston","8":"tag-alley-theatre","9":"tag-grave-robbing","10":"tag-homepage","11":"tag-houston","12":"tag-houston-theater","13":"tag-texas","14":"tag-theater","15":"tag-tx"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115345521656999773","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/289837","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=289837"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/289837\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/289838"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=289837"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=289837"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=289837"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}