Evil Has a Lease on This Apartment: Nu Sass Productions' Everything, Devoured
- The Beltway Blackbox
- Apr 28
- 5 min read
Leo Barrett: Critic, The Beltway Blackbox
Hot Take
Katherine Gwynn's Everything, Devoured does not ease you in. A Chicago apartment, a few friends, a Friday night, and then, fairly quickly, the evening takes a turn. Blood is spread on the floor and Ronald Reagan shows up as a demon. Nu Sass Productions is staging this world premiere at the Sitar Arts Center in a black box that holds around twenty people, which means there is no back row to hide in, no fourth wall worth pretending exists, and no distance between you and what the play is saying. What it is saying is not comfortable and it is not wrong. Ninety minutes, no intermission, a lot of ground covered. Gwynn earns that ground.
Demons, Drag, and the Weight of Right Now
Let's get the concept out of the way: Reagan as a literal demon in drag works. It works because O'Malley Steuerman plays it with zero irony and total physical commitment, which is the only way it could possibly work. The moment you sense a performer is aware of their own performance, the whole thing collapses. Steuerman never blinks. The result is genuinely unsettling in the specific way that close-quarters black box theatre can be unsettling when everyone in the room is doing their job. It's that skin-crawling awareness that you cannot look away and also maybe should not be looking this closely.
Gwynn is using that demon to make a pointed argument: that the forces that left queer Americans to die during the AIDS crisis while those in power performed indifference are the same forces operating right now, in different clothes, with updated talking points. This is not a subtle argument. It is not delivered subtly. The play looks directly at the audience and asks "what you are doing about it?". If that question makes you squirm, Gwynn would probably say that is the point.
The Ensemble: Taking Stock
In the role of Kore, June Dickson-Burke brought an admirable level of sincerity and heart to the stage. Her performance was defined by a quiet, lived-in intensity that favored emotional truth over theatrical artifice. There is a captivating 'stillness' to her work that suggests a sophisticated internal engine.
Tristin Evans as Julian is the kind of performer who makes everyone else on stage better without appearing to try. The work is completely internal, completely specific, and completely convincing. There is no visible seam between the actor and the role. That level of truthfulness sets the temperature for everything around it.
Christian David Harris as Michael spends most of the play operating at a slightly different frequency from the rest of the cast, a little more presentational, a little more disconnected, which initially reads as a liability and in the end reveals itself as a deliberate and well-executed choice. Patience in performance is underrated. Harris has it.
Selena Renee Gil as Dante is doing the useful and genuinely difficult work of keeping the show from disappearing into its own weight. The comic timing shared equally with heavy textual revelation is hard to pull off. Gil makes it feel like a natural extension of the character rather than a theatrical mechanic.
Directors Tracy Erbacher and Ileana Blustein are clearly working from the same blueprint, and the blueprint is good. An atmospheric tension thickens as the night unfolds, layering the air with a palpable sense of unease. The cohesion of this show, in a world premiere, in a very intimate space, is not a given, and they have earned it.
The design work is, on the whole, in service of the story. Vida Huang's lighting tells you when you are in the real world and when you are somewhere else, which in a play like this is essential information. Di Carey's sound design does its work quietly, which is exactly what atmospheric sound design should do. Projections by Sophie Smrcka and Evey Hoang Vo land the show's more visually ambitious moments without overreaching.
The Blackbox Grit
I found it hard to dig up grit for this show. The whole thing worked. Somehow, despite the potential for catastrophe with this daring script, it really, really worked. The only flaws I can identify are minor:
Steuerman's Reagan is fearless, but a handful of line deliveries arrived slightly ahead of the scene partner's cue, anticipating rather than responding. For a character built around supernatural authority and infinite patience, the rhythm of listening matters. It is a small adjustment with a meaningful payoff.
June Dickson-Burke as Kore is emotionally invested throughout, but that investment is not always making it out of the body and into the room. Physical and vocal specificity would do a lot of work here. The stakes are clearly felt; they need to be clearly seen.
The musical moments are maybe the one place the production loses the plot, and the culprit is length. The songs chosen for these sequences are not bad choices, but they run well past the point where they have done their job. Cut them in half and the energy stays in the room. At full length, they stall the momentum the directors have worked hard to build, and they are the only moments in the evening where the audience gets a chance to drift. In a ninety-minute show with no intermission, that is a costly drift.
The apartment door is left cracked open for the entirety of the show, despite actor entrances and exits. I wouldn't want my apartment neighbors seeing or hearing my friends and I summoning a demon. For better or worse, every visual choice is a choice the audience reads. Close the door.
The wine bottle is not convincing as a wine bottle, and the liquid inside it is a different color than anything a pinot noir has ever looked like. Props authenticity whispers in a large performing space and screams in intimate performing spaces.
The Verdict
Everything, Devoured is a world premiere that knows what it wants to say and says it. The production around it is sharp where it counts and alive in a way that matters. Nu Sass Productions is a company making theatre with a point of view, with the craft and guts to back it up. Katherine Gwynn is a playwright asking the right questions at the right time. This is close encounter theatre and you are going to have to deal with the answers.
The Details
Everything, Devoured is a world premiere by Nu Sass Productions running through May 10 at the Sitar Arts Center, at 1700 Kalorama Rd NW #101, Washington, DC. Written by Katherine Gwynn. Directed by Tracy Erbacher and Ileana Blustein. Running time is 90 minutes. Check Nu Sass Productions' website for performance dates and ticketing.
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