Every Halloween season, many theater companies embrace horror. But unlike last  year, Rorschach Theatre isn’t offering the traditional vampires, ghouls, and zombies. With its staging of Steve Yockey’s Sleeping Giant, it evokes cosmic horror, a genre most closely associated with H.P. Lovecraft and defined by a nihilistic cosmos inhabited by ancient, eldritch intelligences of great power who predate humanity. Though Yockey is best known as a television writer and showrunner for The Flight Attendant and Dead Boy Detectives, this play marks his third time working with Rorschach.

It starts with a bang: Ryan (Jacob Yeh), outside his family’s lake house, has just surprised Alex (Sydney Dion) with a fireworks display over the water. But smoke inhalation—and Alex’s shock—causes them to rush inside. Ryan has planned the evening around the courtship rituals described in Lost Palace of the Butterfly King, a book describing “a weird cult in the South Pacific,” though he has notably omitted the human sacrifice and the eating of the in-laws. He dances shirtless for Alex’s female gaze, before segueing into a parody of Rachael “Raygun” Gunn’s much-derided breakdance performance at the 2024 Summer Olympics. (No choreographer is listed; one presumes this dance is a collaboration between Yeh and director Jenny McConnell Frederick.)

Just as Ryan presents an engagement ring, a neighbor bursts in. Local youth Billy (Robert Bowen Smith) witnessed the unexpected fireworks display, but was more shocked by what the fireworks awoke: a many-tentacled titan with one gigantic eye and an otherworldly roar—like thunder with shimmering chimes (sound design by Thom J. Woodward).

Yockey has structured Sleeping Giant as a series of vignettes, a new set of characters, in various living rooms, dealing with the ways their world has rapidly changed since an ages-old Beast emerged from the lake. Occasionally an earlier character is name-dropped or referenced by way of an article of clothing they were wearing earlier. Only in the last two stories do characters reappear onstage. 

In the process, we encounter myriad characters played by a talented cast of four. Erin Denman is particularly memorable as Mabel, a seemingly happy baker, who, despite recent events, assures her panicked friends that life will go on—and that they should eat the cake she’s just frosted.

In another story, Charlie (Yeh) returns home to his lover Dan (Smith) only for Dan to confess an affair during Charlie’s absence. The setup might be melodramatic, except that the encounter was part of the emerging Lake cult ritual. 

The ancient, tentacled creature sleeping beneath the lake’s surface and worshipped by a cult engaged in blood rites seems inspired by Cthulhu, one of Lovecraft’s better known “Great Old Ones.” Though Lovecraft’s work casts a long shadow on pop culture, many shy away from straight adaptation due to Lovecraft’s racism, antisemitism, and misogyny. Instead creatives sometimes riff on his cosmological themes and—as with Matt Ruff’s 2016 novel, Lovecraft Country (and 2020 TV adaptation), or Alan Moore and Jacen Burrows’ graphic novel series—attempt to deconstruct Lovecraft’s bigotry. Undoubtedly, given his views on race, Lovecraft would be uncomfortable with Rorschach’s diverse and capable cast in a play that so heavily alludes to his work.

Yockey largely keeps the monster offstage, instead showing how its presence causes outbreaks of nihilism, and ritualized violence. Many possible metaphors present themselves: During the opening night’s reception, Yockey noted his surprise that Salt Lake City audiences, many of whom were lapsed Mormons‚ saw Sleeping Giant as a veiled allegory for the Church of Latter Day Saints, and its influence on day-to-day-life in their city.

In D.C., where the local industries are politics and government, one association may be the rise of political demagogues and the cultish behavior of their followers. Another reading might compare Sleeping Giant to the constant dissemination of conspiracy theories and hate on social media—or even terrorist organizations calling for the blood of both their followers and victims.

In a wonderfully directed set piece, a new age couple, Jill (Denman) and Nathan (Yeh), have a full conversation about slow food, farmers markets, and their anti-corporate lifestyle while doing yoga. They’re joined by Jesse (Dionne), whom they’ve initiated into their way of life. She returns the favor with a superfood purchased from the Lake Cult that promises eternal life. The actors give it the appropriate level of disgust and horror. The connection between new age spirituality and far-right occultism may have entered pop-culture consciousness in Umberto Eco’s bestselling 1988 novel, Foucault’s Pendulum, but it feels most recently personified in the horned visage of January 6 insurrectionist Jacob “The QAnon Shaman” Chansley.

The lower level of Rorschach’s current storefront location, a former clothing store, has been transformed by set designer Sarah Beth Hall into a simple living room, easily transformed from scene to scene. Ashlynne Ludwig gives each character distinctive looks, ranging from the bro-ey to the bougie, from casual to cultic, from floral dresses to fascinators. Video designer Kylos Brannon has created colorful and sometimes unsettling animated interstitials in between scenes, but his final digital flourish is an animation that homages one of the more horrific sequences of panels from Grant Morrison and Richard Case’s iconic run on the Doom Patrol comic book.

Sleeping Giant does not rely on jump-scares, but the dread of a world beyond our living room that holds no respect for either our moral sentiments or normative expectations. And yet, this production allows it to be both wickedly and subtly satirical.

Rorschach Theatre presents Sleeping Giant, written by Steve Yockey and directed by Jenny McConnell Frederick, running through Nov. 3 at 1020 Connecticut Ave. NW. rorschachtheatre.com. $20–$50.