Mutilation immolation cannibalism. You’ll find all these terrible things and plenty more in Victor and Victoria’s Terrifying Tale of Terrible Things. Also two mysteriously abandoned children who may or may not have been murdered. And all just in time for Halloween.
Created and performed by Nathan Cuckow and Beth Graham of Edmonton’s Kill Your Television theatre collective and presented in Calgary by One Yellow Rabbit Terrible Things began as an Edmonton Fringe show in 2009. The idea for the show dates back to 2003 however when Cuckow and Graham found a dark crawl space in a theatre and used it to try to out-spook each other.
“We took on these voices of a young brother and sister who may or may not have been murdered” says Cuckow. “It’s macabre in nature but there’s a sensibility that Beth and I both immediately got.” Since the show’s inaugural run (garnering them an Elizabeth Sterling Haynes Award for Outstanding Fringe Production) Terrible Things toured to New York and expanded into a mainstage show in 2012.
The title should give you a hint that the play doesn’t take itself too seriously. This “oddball macabre romp” as Graham calls it tells the story of two young Victorian-era children who wake up in the middle of the night with their parents having inexplicably disappeared. As they begin reading a book titled The Terrifying Tale of Terrifying Things the adventures and horrors on the page begin to come to life. Along the way they learn a dark secret about their own family.
The performers agree the play is a little hard to describe but if you mashed up The Princess Bride and Beetlejuice then threw in a little Freddy Krueger you’d come close to the mark — they say people should expect to laugh throughout the horror.
“It’s an homage but it’s also a satire of Victorian storytelling” says Cuckow. The era gives them plenty of material to work with from prim British manners to insane asylums to portraits of the dead. As Graham puts it “Anything Victorian often has an element of creepiness to it.”
Terrible Things also draws inspiration from sources such as Tim Burton’s films Edward Gorey’s illustrations and Edgar Allen Poe’s classic horror all of which helps to make the show simultaneously funny and appalling. “Having that difference of time gives us the licence to make fun of such a dark subject” says Graham.
The show’s fringe origins are apparent in the simplicity of the set (the children’s bed and end-table and little else). When developing the play into a full-length show Cuckow says they made the sound design (by Terry Fairfield) a major theatrical component. “We’re limited to the imagination in how we’re going to create the environment” he says. “Sound is something that can really be beneficial especially when you’re trying to scare people.” Quickening the audience’s imagination (and fears) through sound mirrors the action onstage because while the play is about terrible things it’s also about the children’s imaginations and how they might be scaring themselves.
So despite all the laughs Terrible Things explores some deeper territory such as how children cope with trauma. “There is a spook factor” says Cuckow. “We definitely are examining the nature of fear and whether or not it makes sense to confront your fears.”
All in all though this show is a bit of Halloween fun. “Hopefully [audiences] will be a little freaked out but in the best way” says Graham. Don’t leave your phobias at the door for this one — bring them with you and you might be able to laugh them away.
Victor and Victoria’s Terrifying Tale of Terrible Things runs until November 1 at Big Secret Theatre (Epcor Centre).
