Most songs are vaudeville-style with some tap dancing, like Irving Berlin’s “Pack Up Your Sins and Go to the Devil,” and there’s one haunting country and western classic, “(Ghost) Riders in the Sky.” The songs provide levity when sandwiched between two scary stories, allowing the audience a moment of reset so that stories all land as intended and can stand alone rather than running together. The show alternates evenly between narrative stories - sung-through or not - and Halloween-adjacent songs. The show earns its 18-21+ rating right off the bat (no pun intended), as this vignette features the evening’s first nude depiction. It is entirely sung through, inviting the audience to sing along to the refrain. A mixture of roll-by illustrations with a puppet on a stick, “Le Petit Vampyr,” an original story by The Ghastly Dreadfuls with music by Bryan Mercer, centers on a vampire but is thoroughly lighthearted. I can’t remember the last time I attended a performance with a movie-level underscoring such as this, and it is quite amazing.įor new audience members who might expect the company to stick to marionettes and sock puppets, the first story sets the scene right away for a varied showcase. It is so seamless, it is hardly noticeable. The fun, lighthearted song sets the scene for the combination of quirky humor, spooky storytelling, and skilled artistry that dominates the night.Īnd what’s an evening of scary stories without subtle yet perfectly placed background music? The Dreadfuls take on the challenge of constant underscoring, with Robert Stickland (“Shockingly Dreadful”) on the piano, DePoy on violin and Cornell on the cello. Especially in “Introduction,” Scott DePoy (“Dizzily Dreadful”) and Jenn Cornell (“Joyfully Dreadful”) demonstrate exciting and remarkable musical prowess.
This number showcases one of the most enjoyable aspects of the performance: the impressive musical talent of the cast. They include their clever character names, ranging from “Shockingly Dreadful” to “Simply Dreadful” to “Catly Dreadful” (the one feline in the mix who, naturally, only mews the whole evening). The piece begins with a self-titled opening number featuring song and dance, with almost every performer playing an instrument.
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