For a play to end and then get no applause from the audience is either the worst thing that could happen to a performance, or the best. The cast of The House Theatre of Chicago’s Hatfield and McCoy are lucky enough for it to be the latter.

Entering into the theatre, you’re given a small card with a picture. This serves both as your ticket and your program. You choose a seat, all of which are practically on the stage. Looking around you see actors in costume mingling with the audience and strumming their guitars. They want you to see them, not just for ego’s sake, but because this is part of the show.

The show is set up as a play within a play and then with some more plays within that. The title comes from the famous, feuding Southern families, but the story is a combination of Romeo and Juliet and Macbeth, mixed with A Mighty Wind’s folk-style songs and a revivalist meeting or two. The families are exact opposites and complete enemies. The play starts off with three Hatfields killing multiple Yankees in order to kill one McCoy, setting up the brutal and bloody nature of the play.

As gruesome revenge gradually destroys each family, short plays within the play lighten the mood. These are put on by Rose Anna McCoy, a feisty, Shakespeare-loving tomboy who falls in love with Johnse, a Hatfield. She is the only character who, using her skits, naively tries to make amends between both families.

It is obvious you are supposed to be aware that you are watching a play. The characters talk to the audience not just before the play starts and during intermission, but even if they have “died” a mere five seconds ago.

They address lines to the audience only to ignore them a minute later. They sing songs concert-style between scenes, complete with bulky, visible, wireless microphones. In one song, a character plays a modern plastic-backed guitar complete with volume controls.

Only some characters keep their southern accent, and even fewer of them are actually believable.

Then the play throws you the kicker. Like any good Shakespearean tragedy, almost everyone dies. Sara Hoyer, who plays Rose Anna, shines when she honestly portrays the gut wrenching transformation through shock then grief at her lover’s death. She gives the best performance of the night with a monologue seemingly straight from Shakespeare’s pen.

Writer Shawn Pfautsch tries to tackle the large topics of reality and theatre, love and hate, and peace and war. He does this using a true story portrayed like a Shakespearean play. He obviously hopes this tactic combined with the dramatic material and shockingly gruesome fights will make the play stick in the minds of watchers. The myriad of dramatic techniques force the audience to continue to think about Hatfield and McCoy after they leave.

If the stunned silence before an uproarious standing ovation is any indication, he has overwhelmingly succeeded.

Hatfield and McCoy is being performed by The House Theatre of Chicago at Viaduct Theatre. The show closes November 4, 2006 and runs Thurs.-Sat. at 8p.m. and Sun. at 7 p.m. Tickets are $10-$22.