Shocktoberfest!! 2010 for Halloween at Hypnodrome
 |
| Kara Emry and Flynn DeMarco in Thrillpeddlers’ Shocktoberfest!! 2010: Kiss of Blood Photo by www.DavidAllenStudio.com |
A severed finger, a severed hand, detached heads, torture devices, and a lot of stage blood. Welcome to San Francisco’s Halloween season. Thrillpeddlers puts on the eleventh annual production of their signature show Shocktoberfest!! Three one-act plays at the Hypnodrome Theatre explore themes of bondage, discipline and sado-masochism, the clever effectiveness of a scold’s bridle, stolen pharmaceuticals, and a psychotic desire to assuage guilt by amputation, all with shamelessly superficial acting and gleeful delight in over-the-top horror.
Thrillpeddlers producers Russell Blackwood and James Toczyl artfully recreate the French theatrical style of Grand Guignol, after the tradition of a 1920s Parisian theater. Gore permeates the atmosphere of eerie props and ghastly consequences. Russ, Jim and their ensemble of performers enthusiastically embrace the brazen pageant of terror and sexual titillation. The half-hour title piece “Kiss of Blood” is an English adaptation by Daniel Zilber of a 1929 French-language play presented first at Théâtre du Grand Guignol in Paris. The first two contemporary pieces were penned by New York playwright Rob Keefe. All take place in the whimsical production space near Division Street in SF.
Keefe’s “Lips of the Damned” uses an onstage guillotine prop known as “The Widow.” James Toczyl plays the smarmy Curator in his “museum of atrocities.” Although Kara Emry as the wife of The Widow’s inventor binds her dockworker lover Andre (Daniel Bakken) and whips him into position in the guillotine, she falls for the inventor’s urgings to find the secret of The Widow by wearing the scold’s bridle, a metal cage for the head, and biting on the projection into the mouth. She bites and the blood starts flowing. Meanwhile, the rodent exterminators are releasing their poison gas.
The next play, “The Empress of Colma,” uses music at first to explain the history of the scold’s bridle and why the mouth projection was involved. The well-choreographed ensemble (by Michael Phillis and Rory Davis) sings of the magnificent device. “It makes all your nagging problems go away.” This is an artful transition.
The scene change between the two plays is smooth and seamless, but scene two of “Colma” enters an entirely different milieu. Russ Blackwood as Crystal, holder of a Colma beauty pageant ribbon, refuses to give up her title to either Patty Himst (a very masculine Eric Tyson Wertz) or Sunny (Birdie-Bob Watt trying to iron her long platinum wig). Their friend Marcie (Kara Emry again) was to score for the three drags, but all she could manage on her way back from her dental school studies was to steal some sodium pentothal. They decide to huff it on a rag. Then they bare their souls to each other while Grandma upstairs (L. Ron Hubby with a suitably discordant voice) screams not to go down there with the queens because of the evil. The results of the truth serum cause dissension among the group. Then out comes the hypodermic syringe.
After intermission, “Kiss of Blood” is set in a hospital brain surgery. A frenzied, deeply troubled crazy man (Birdie-Bob Watt) insists that the Dr. Leduc (Flynn DeMarco, who also played in “Lips of the Damned”) amputate his trigger finger because it pains him so. Watts’ stage reaction to the plot between Dr. Voulone (Bonni Suval) and Dr. Leduc to frighten the Patient out of his psychosis does not go the way it was intended. As Dr. Voulone slowly passes each sharp shiny instrument to the operating surgeon, Watt’s eyes especially, but also his whole face light up with fascination.
Thrillpeddlers’ relentlessly brutal staging makes the amputation itself nightmarishly entertaining. The denouement of this short play occurs when the Patient encounters the ghost of his former wife (L. Ron Hubby in ragged widow’s weeds). The production uses strobe-lit entrances with a very short reading time to introduce her. When she stands with him and demands revenge for her murder, the Patient’s guilt forces him to make a further amputation.
The Shocktoberfest signature tradition is to completely black out the house and float glowing apparitions through the audience. Past night-light shows have been longer with more flying elements. Thrillpeddlers take joy in presenting horrible scenes with the loving menace of such authors as Edgar Allen Poe and Steven King, those who want to show just how horrible they can be and rub your nose in it. This is the time of the season to get in the spooky spirit, especially now that the costumes are starting to come out.
"The Forsaken Laboratory," a co-production between Thrillpeddlers and Vigor Mortis (Brazil's Grand Guignol theatre company), will be performed at the end of the Shocktoberfest!! 2010 Kiss of Blood bill on October 21 and 22, and 28 - 31. There will be a Halloween show at midnight.
Shocktoberfest!! 2010: Kiss of Blood continues through November 19 at The Hypnodrome,
575 10th Street, San Francisco. Tickets ($25 general admission; $35 premium for “Shock Boxes” and “Turkish Lounges,” sold in pairs only) are available at Brown Paper Tickets or by calling 800.838.3006. Also visit www.thrillpeddlers.com.