The Toronto Theatre Review: Doc Wuthergloom’s Little Lib’ary of the Damned at the Red Sandcastle Theatre

By Ross

We’re warned before we even take our seats: doom is imminent. A committed, possibly possessed woman (a wonderful Katalia Bushnik) clutching an insanely dressed doll, insists that only a $5 Doc Digest will save our souls from the horrors to be unleashed tonight at the Red Sandcastle Theatre. Her pitch barely fades before our eyes are pulled to the slumped figure of Dr. Pretorious Wuthergloom, itinerant exorcist and professor of peculiarities, glaring out into the abyss. He lounges inertly in a chair as though the end of time bores him. And when he stands, peeling himself up to engage, singing us a darkly monstrous song about pain and insanity, this wild and wonderful carnival act has officially begun, with a chop chop and a series of pantomimed screams of agony that demand applause. Whether you want to or not.

Monsters are all around us, he tells us menacingly, as he strides into this unraveling tale of doom, teasing us with deathly incantations that sound like prophecy. They are all packed inside this stack of cursed books, locked away to the side, waiting to unleash deadly demons into the room and into our nightmares. If only we knew which key opened the lock, maybe we could all be saved! But inside Doc Wuthergloom’s Little Lib’ary of the Damned and the numerous tales of lunacy and horror that lurk inside that pile of cursed books, he also offers us a pathway to salvation, and it will only cost us an apotropaic $5.

What follows is a magical phantasmagorical tour, featuring spectral puppets that come shrieking out from the darkness. Wuthergloon dutifully sets out to amaze and horrify, through a dread-laced labyrinth of magic that will definitely astound. A withered oracle’s head delivers a tale of retribution, and a spectral carousel of cursed horses threatens to run rampant through the aisles, devouring all who foolishly stand in their way. Yet somehow, Wuthergloom spins the morbid renderings into something completely magnificent, the macabre into a vaudeville of verbal wizardry and wicked wonder.

The puppetry, designed with devious flair by Melanie McNeill, whose wicked craftsmanship also haunted the superb Macbeth: A Tale Told by an Idiot, feels dredged from nightmares and dipped in dark-black humour. Through each sinister vignette, Woolfe performs as though possessed by equal parts Edward Gorey and a Victorian sideshow barker splashed with brimstone. His eldritch charisma animates even the most dubious contraption, his voice a velvet growl that seduces, shocks, and occasionally scolds. One incantation, in particular, was so deliciously dense with arcane rhyming that I could feel my soul giggling as I watched with amazement those fortunate souls who purchased the digest attempted to join in the incantation chorus. The failure was profound, unleashing unknown demons (and laughter).

Woolfe’s trickery is utterly and masterfully theatrical, delivered down from the goblin gods, and with each impossibly smooth sleight of hand, every gleefully ghastly puppet, and those magnetic word-braided spells that sound like Winifred Sanderson and her sisters after a night at the cabaret, the Doctor draws us deeper into shadow while somehow keeping our laughter fully lit.

No one blends menace and merriment quite like Woolfe, as he did with his previous show, Buster Canfield’s Apocalyptic Miracle Show at the Red Sandcastle Theatre. And just like he did with his magical tonic in his Miracle Show, he persuades us to join in with the ritual, ensnaring us in his talk of death and doom while ensuring that we never forget the one hidden moral truth beneath this spectral riot: buy the Digest, and be spared. Refuse, and risk eternal ass-singeing in the underworld’s overdue book room. It’s brilliant, and just dangerous enough to keep us hooked. A devilish bargain never felt so fun.

With direction by Ric Waugh that dances between séance and slapstick and Woolfe’s impeccable grasp of how to seduce a crowd with nothing more than a two-fingered hand puppet, a string, a ring, and a perfectly timed raise of the eyebrow, Doc Wuthergloom’s Little Lib’ary of the Damned is a riot of sorcery, satire, and savage spirit. Resist if you dare. But better to lean in, buy your salvation, and leave with a Digest tucked under your arm, just in case you wake one night to the gentle tap-tap-tap of a cursed vampire puppet at your window asking to be let in. After all, $5 is a small price to pay for one more night in the land of the living.