This was a week for Grand Guignol, the theatrical form specializing in gore and grotesquery, first with a trip to TheatreWorks' Sweeney Todd, and the following night to the 15th annual installment of Thrillpeddlers' Shocktoberfest. While the bloody geysers of the original 1979 Broadway Sweeney are only symbolically rendered in the current TheatreWorks production, don't expect Thrillpeddlers to palliate the plasma. Applause and laughter may have replaced the fainting and occasional vomiting of a century ago, but Thrillpeddlers can still knock an audience for the occasional loop with its graphic special effects.
That is certainly the case with the centerpiece attraction, The Bloody Debutante, that goes to oh-no-they-didn't extremes. Scrumbly Koldewyn's oratorio has a Carrie kind of vibe as a young woman (Roxanne RedMeat), humiliated at a dance, seeks revenge. "Her date was a jerk so she went berserk," sings a chorus of a secret society that, don't ask me how, takes up her cause. The result is that the jerk (Earl Alfred Paus) winds up missing an appendage that the debutante repurposes as a penetrative weapon. Noah Haydon directed and choreographed the elaborate piece, but it's unclear who should be credited with the disturbingly realistic makeup job done on the jerk-date's lower pelvis. Perhaps that would be prop designer Yusuke Soi, whose work is a critical component of the entire production, or busy costumers Birdie-Bob Watt, Dwight Overton, Diego Gomez, Julian Gutierrez, and Crystal Why.
The Bloody Debutante is one of the four principal pieces that make up the current edition of Shocktoberfest. In Rob Keefe's opener The Taxidermist's Revenge, first presented at the 2006 Shocktoberfest, Birdie-Bob Watt is a delightfully maniacal, addled taxidermist who believes his craft should be considered art. With the help of an unwitting young chemist (Hayley Nystrom), he goes to extremes to prove his case to members of an arts academy. Russell Blackwood, who also serves as our contagiously gregarious host for the evening, is the director.
The second piece dates back to Edgar Allan Poe's 1854 short story "The System of Dr. Tarr and Professor Fether" that then became a play that Theatre du Grand Guignol in Paris added to its repertory at the turn of the century. Thrillpeddlers' permutation is written and directed by Paulo Biscaia Filho of Brazil's Vigor Mortis company, and stars John Flaw as the wild-eyed director of an asylum and Burna Palmeiro as an earnest journalist come to write a story about the doctor's revolutionary "system of soothing" treatment. This piece turns on an easily predicted premise with a gross-out finale involving the reporter's gagging efforts to ingest a dinner roast of questionable origins.
The evening's simplest piece comes last, and it is the best of the lot. Andy Wenger and Damien Chacona co-authored Deathwrite, and they play feuding co-authors of a novel that promises to make them rich once it reaches the publisher. An argument over how to divvy up credit and royalties leads to a comically ingenious game of murderous one-upmanship that variously involves a poisoned cocktail, a gun, an axe, a garrote, and even a hand grenade. Blackwood directs this little gem.
Shoktoberfest wouldn't be complete without the lights-out spook-show finale, a tradition that Thrillpeddlers regulars aren't so likely to find spooky as the blood-red cherry on top of the cake.
Shocktoberfest will run through Nov. 22 at the Hypnodrome. Tickets are $30-$35. Call 377-4202 or go to thrillpeddlers.com.