White Noise: We're Doomed.

A Broadway-bound production premiering in New Orleans dares its audience to deny the regime of hatred ever present in today’s society. Using American pop culture as an outlet to present its case, “White Noise” is an unconventional musical of the utmost disturbing kind. Its challenge lies in the extent to which its vision can be seen beyond the stage and consequently how resounding it really is.

The story unfolds around a pop band of the play’s same title starring two sisters, Eva and Kady Sillers (MacKenzie Mauzy and Patti Murin). In the beginning, when White Noise’s new manager, Rick (Brandon Williams), who wants to make them Billboard stars describes them as “cute little Nazis,” he isn’t exaggerating. Their addictive choruses yet fascist lyrics are straight out of white supremacist propaganda. The tunes “Tragic,” “Do The Laundry” (in which a strangely upbeat demonstration of separating the whites from the colors is given), and the frighteningly catchy rap song “White Invention” all manage to stick in the head of anyone who hears them, immediately causing unease thereafter.

No doubt Eva Sillers’ namesake is that of Eva Braun – Hitler’s mistress and consultant who stuck by his side till their fateful demise. As tiny as Mauzy is in frame and body mass, she’s tremendous in vocal volume and passionate bigotry. Her subscribed ideology is convincing as a shockingly blunt and blatant racist of all those excluded from the Caucasian persuasion. One of the creepiest aspects of Eva is that she’s exceptionally well spoken and driven in her cause, just as most sociopathic dictators tend to be (see Hitler, Stalin, Hussein).

Though Mauzy turns out an intimidating and disconcerting performance, what’s considerably more horrifying is that her and Murin’s characters are based on real life tween Aryans. The seemingly innocent twin sisters are in a band called Prussian Blue. These golden-lock-adorned-milky-white-skinned twins are nothing more than ignorant hatred fueled neo-Nazis (or “White Separatists” as they’d like to be referred to), assumedly lead blind by their mother, as the Sillers sisters were by their mother, Laurel, in White Noise (Nancy Anderson who also offered a praise worthy, almost sympathetic and somber performance). In a “Good Morning America” edition featuring the twins, they said that for fun, they play a game called “dance around the swastika.” Ever tried hopscotch, Nazi freaks?

Every facet of the production was of supreme craftsmanship, from the lighting to the stage-protected orchestra to the impressive performances of a relatively fresh, young batch of actors. White Noise is Patrick Murney’s first full scale production outside the confines of Syracuse University, where he received his BFA in acting. Murney plays Duke, Eva’s boyfriend and bassist of White Noise who might as well have been wearing an SS officer uniform. He was one of those characters you weren’t sure whether to clap or boo for his heinous portrayal during curtain call.

White Noise should also be applauded in its bravery. Directors Mitchell Maxwell and Donald Byrd put a shameful, tea time taboo reality on display, restraining nothing from extremely derogatory terminology to bringing out in the open — to a desensitized degree — concepts such as lynchings. The themes demanded the audience to look inside themselves and their fellow humans to consider how much racism and hate prevail within both.

With that being said, it was also an extremely pessimistic and discouraging outlook on society and society’s potential of tolerance. Everyone in the play was a villain and part of the perpetuating problem. It offered absolutely no hope for individual or general growth. This was White Noise’s aim yet downfall. It was a difficult piece of theater to swallow — uncomfortable and unpleasant. Hopefully the fact that it seemed a lost cause and that such monumental racism is inevitable was an example to its audience that such grim outcomes must be prevented.