By Eric George Tauber
SAN DIEGO — Childhood can be a dark and scary time. There are monsters under the bed and ghosts in the closet. And the most important lesson we learn is that life is not fair.
“The wise man sees the error of his ways.
The fool passes on and is punished.”
In 1845, Dr. Heinrich Hoffmann published Der Struwwelpeter, a book of children’s poems. But don’t think Mother Goose or Dr. Seuss. Hoffman’s dire verses reflect the sardonic humor of Edward Gorey and Charles Addams. These are cautionary tales in which a picky eater dies of malnutrition, a girl who plays with matches burns to death and sucking your thumb incurs the wrath of a ghoulish tailor who amputates moistened digits with scissors.
Scenic Designers Sean Fanning and Jungah Han bring us into the nightmarish world of a sad, frightened child. The house is a dreary gray with slate floors and walls leaning at harsh angles. In the center stands an impossibly large and foreboding wardrobe with all the tricks of a magician’s cabinet. Brilliant.
“Those of a weak constitution, leave now.”
The Emcee, Sarah Errington, had us eating out of her hand from the moment she entered. She presses five wretched souls into service to tell the tales. The Ensemble rises to the physically and vocally demanding tasks by mimicking a cavalcade of people, toys and animals.
The costumes and puppets by Shirley Pierson, accented by wigs and makeup by Peter Herman, have a darkly cartoonish, surreal, steam-punk feel with long tailcoats and curled moustaches.
Kevane La’marr Coleman had the statuesque poise of RuPaul as the begowned and heavily made up Mother while Adrian Alita’s Father evoked the kind of stern, aloof disciplinarian whose children wail on a shrink’s couch for years later.
The Siren, Steve Gouveia, croons throughout the show with a disturbingly strong falsetto. He’s a kind of psychotic clown with a wig of curly red hair, a black tutu and fishnet hose leading down to high-heels. If Bozo the Clown and Dr. Frankfurter hooked up for a drunk one-nighter and somehow reproduced, this would have been their offspring.
Shockheaded Peter is a playful romp thru a child’s scariest nightmares. No fate is too gruesome to be imagined and no punches are pulled.
With such a grim worldview set down in verse for a children’s book, I can’t help wondering if Dr. Hoffmann didn’t play a part in setting the stage for the darkest chapter in Germany’s history. We all need cautionary tales to avoid tragic fates. But we also need rays of hope and the milk of human kindness to remind us that dreams can also be sweet.
Shockheaded Peter plays at the Cygnet Theatre in Old Town through June 18th.