Broadway and Beyond: Playwright David Lindsay-Abaire wows the masses with Halloween display in Ditmas Park
NEW YORK -- A Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright, with a new musical on Broadway, loves Halloween so much he turns his Brooklyn home into an over-the-top haunted house.
As CBS2's Dave Carlin reported Wednesday from Ditmas Park, Brooklyn, it's as big a hit with neighbors as the work he puts on stage.
There are flashing lights, ghostly projections and more than 60 animatronic figures, some spooky and others terrifying, transforming what is usually a tidy Victorian Queen Anne house on the corner of Albemarle and Argyle Roads.
"I asked him and he's like, 'Alright, let's do it,'" resident Arthur Koch said.
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Five-year-old Misha was a first timer. Right off the bat, an animatronic dog jumped out at him.
"Yeah, he got a fright from the dog," his father said.
Maybe it wasn't the best idea, his dad said. Misha said he wasn't a fan of the animatronic clowns either.
"[It was] enough, enough for the first time," his father said.
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The brains and the brawn behind all the scenes is David Lindsay-Abaire, who is married with two kids. He sets up the house year after year by himself.
"The skeletons are the most harrowing part of the decorating because it involves my getting onto the second-floor roof and reaching up and going to the third floor and reaching out of window. So my wife isn't so happy about it," Lindsay-Abaire said.
His house brings him neighborhood fame, while his day job earns him the Broadway kind.
Lindsay-Abaire is a Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright who has remounted his celebrated show "Kimberly Akimbo" as a musical, now on Broadway.
"I love putting on a show for people. I have to say, [the Haloween display] is a little more work than mounting a Broadway musical because it's just me," Lindsay-Abaire said.
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After dark and during the day, kids shriek and scream.
"I don't even hear them anymore," Lindsay-Abaire said. "I don't look at the electricity bill, and I don't look at the lawn. That's the thing. The lawn is destroyed every single year and every year, it comes back."
There are new additions this Halloween to the clown portrait gallery, including several that were dropped off mysteriously on the doorstep.
"Several clown paintings just appeared on my porch, so I think a lot of people just have clown paintings in their closet and I'm the guy that inherits them," Lindsay-Abaire said.
To enjoy the work of this master showman, you can choose between Brooklyn and Broadway.
On Halloween, the street in front of his house is closed to traffic for a lively neighborhood parade, with crowds trick-or-treating.