Hollwood Fringe Review Bottoms and Bones – A Heterosexual Horror

Bottoms and Bones: A Heterosexual Horror is pretty much what you’d expect from its title, but those expectations leave the audience feeling a step ahead of the characters.

In terms of subject matter and theme, Bottoms and Bones: A Heterosexual Horror is virtually the apotheosis of the Hollywood Fringe. The boundary-pushing nature of the annual festival invites artists to explore everything from cult horror to personal tales of coming out, so why not combine both? It’s all there in the title!

The clever comingling provides the expected laughs, but cluing the audience in so clearly soon leads expectations to outpace results: in the time-honored tradition of high school horror stories, the clueless characters are slow to figure out they’re in a high school horror story; fortunately, the last half picks up the pace, and the story ends up exactly where it should be, providing a satisfying resolution.

Review: Two or Three Body Paragraphs

After a brief intro depicting the mysterious death of the newly elected high school president, Bottoms and Bones: A Heterosexual Horror introduces us to its titular couple, jock Brad Bottoms (Aryan Chhabra) and cheerleader Brittany Bones (Olivia Truninger), who make a promise to be together for the rest of their lives. Although they clearly like each other, their professed adoration has a forced quality, and it soon becomes obvious to the audience (if not to the couple) that each is suppressing their same-sex orientation. Meanwhile, their fellow students are dying off one by one in the spooky woods behind the high school, their corpses usually found near a spooky book. Being a comedy, the surviving characters shrug off the deaths, noting that the corpses will be useful props in the school’s upcoming production of Hamlet (because lots of characters die in that play). Eventually, the deaths strike closer to home, forcing Brad and Brittany to consider why the curse of the spooky book is targeting their friends.

Bottoms and Bones: A Heterosexual Horror gets off to a good start, quickly establishing the situation and the comic tone, but then it drones on a bit. We immediately realize that Brad and Brittany are closeted kids whose true romantic interest lie elsewhere, but then the script merely repeats the point without developing it further. This goes on for a while, occasionally interrupted by another death, in the manner of a slasher film where clueless characters can’t be bothered to notice the danger threatening their lives. Fortunately, things pick up in the second half when Brad realizes that a wish he wrote in the spooky book is inadvertently causing the deaths, and he and his friends set out to stop the curse. Audience patience is rewarded with a satisfying resolution that ends exactly where it should.

The script benefits from some clever touches, using puns to underline the same-sex attraction that Brad and Brittany are trying to deny: Brad and his male friend “have chemistry” both in the literal sense of it being a class they share and in the figurative sense of being attracted to each other. Likewise, Brittany and her female friend “have history.” Brads last name is also used repeatedly as a euphemism for taking a submissive role in a gay relationship. “Brad Bottoms,” says a character, to which Brad replies, “No, I don’t!” It’s amusing but maybe a bit overused.

The production has fun with the death scenes. Initially, they are conveyed with ghastly red lighting and grizzly sound effects before a quick blackout, but they become more explicit later, with characters marching off-stage into a woodchipper which hurls body parts back onto the stage. The evil force at work remains mostly unseen, but once or twice it manifests as an actor in a mask (in one case, amusingly, taking the appearance of the school mascot).

Review: Conclusion

In the long run, we enjoyed Bottoms and Bones; the run just went on a little too long. The horror angle is largely absent from the first half, resulting in something that feels like a high school melodrama occasionally spiced up with a comic-horror interlude. In the end, it all comes together quite nicely, playing the old horror trope of The Return of the Repressed. The wish Brad wrote in the spooky book (it is funny that the spook book and the spooky woods are referred to so generically) is at odds with his true nature, which he has repressed; that conflict becomes manifested in the horror visited on his fellow students. It’s a pretty cool idea that requires a dramatic change on the part of Brad to resolve the situation: rather than “manning up” to defeat the menace like a typical hero, it’s all about coming out to yourself and your friends.

Bottoms and Bones Photo Gallery

Brad Bottoms and Brittany Bones

Holding the spooky book, Brad leads his friends into the spooky woods.

Students search for clues in the spooky book.

Watch out – that construction site has a woodchipper!

The evil curse briefly manifests as the school mascot.

Two students confront danger.

Brad’s teammate becomes another victim.

Survivors finally realize they should probably do something.

The victim’s body is carried off by the prop department for use in “Hamlet”

The resident Goth character recites her poetry.