Review: Dreadful Episodes Dresses Up as Edward Gorey’s Twisted Mind for Halloween

Edward Gorey, the gothic artist and author who spent the prime of his career cavorting around New York City in a raccoon coat and converse sneakers, is—as the kids say—a vibe. His most famous book, The Gashlycrumb Tinies, walks through the alphabet by way of alliterative child deaths: “A is for Amy who fell down the stairs. B is for Basil assaulted by bears.”

All that to say, he’s the right kind of weird for Happenstance Theater, a devised theater company known for spinning genre into entertainment and now paying homage to Gorey at 59E59 Theaters with Dreadful Episodes, a macabre collection of Gorey-esque vignettes.

In terms of substance, it doesn’t go far beyond the two dimensions of a mood board. But if your Halloween tastes lean more Tim Burton than Charlie Brown, it could scratch your spooky season itch (lighting designer Kris Thompson nails the gothic aesthetic).

Dreadful Episodes is pieced together like a 75-minute cartoon reel with revolving-door performances by co-directors Mark Jaster and Sabrina Mandell, Gwen Grastorf, Sarah Olmsted Thomas, and Jay Owen, with atmospheric underscoring and vaguely Victorian emceeing by pianist Stephanie Baird (Jaster occasionally joins her on musical saw).

Dim-witted girls, vindictive maids (Grastorf’s best character), and clowning schlemiels (a market cornered by Owen), all dressed like gloomy Edwin Drood characters (costumes by Mandell), traipse on and offstage meeting fates of either death or indignity. Usually both. Sometimes there’s singing.

It’s all in the name of good fun. And there are some true comedic highs when the dark humor is pushed beyond the line of expectation. Jaster, for one, is excellent as a silently maniacal uncle facilitating his pestering nieces’ most dangerous playtime proposals so they may not live to pester another day.

But too often, when we should be moving briskly from dreadful episode to dreadful episode, the show falls to a funereal pace. Even the scene crafted as the showstopper—a croquet game that turns into slow-motion carnage—overstays its welcome.

With its energetic peaks and valleys and sprinkled-in musical interludes, the production gives the impression of a puzzle with too many pieces to fit the frame. It’s a risk you run when the democracy of devising is involved. But if the Happenstance Theater troupe has channeled Gorey’s twisted spirit at all, they should know that sometimes you need to kill your darlings.