By SEAN PLUMMER
Spooky season in Toronto just wouldn’t be complete without a trek to the city’s east end to indulge in another hilariously horrific outing from Eldritch Theatre. Helmed by prolific and puppet-friendly playwright/actor/card shark Eric Woolfe, Eldritch has established itself as a proud purveyor of Lovecraftian hilarity, with Woolfe creating a theatrical universe populated by ongoing references to the Necronomicon, the Ravenscrag Asylum for the Mentally Deranged, the Mad Arab Abdul Alhazred, and Old Ones invariably seeking to reclaim their rightful place as the rulers of this miserable world.
Woolfe’s latest, PHANTASMAGORIA 3D, relies on an intriguing gimmick (Live 3D) that readily surpasses its clever if schlocky trappings with a well-told tale of madness and apocalypse. Woolfe (although we don’t know it at first) plays Gillette Sharpshank, a sex-negative crank who becomes convinced that his family – and, indeed, most of the people in his life – have been replaced by evil creatures living in the bowels of the Earth. Woolfe’s unreliable narrator weaves a tale that ably bounces between insanity and proto-inceldom. This narrative, which is presented in past, present and future, although not necessarily in that order, is based on “The Shaver Mystery,” in which crank writer Richard Shaver had his ramblings of a hidden world published by storied sci-fi magazine Amazing Stories (here rechristened Amazing Yarns) back in the 1940s. Woolfe peppers his storytelling with the expected references to Cthulhu and other Old Ones, as well as Thomas Ligotti’s fallen city of Carcosa.
PHANTASMAGORIA 3D is told via the aforementioned process of Live 3D, which I will fail to describe here in order to whet your appetite for experiencing it in person. Suffice it to say that, yes, it does involve wearing the same red-and-blue 3D glasses I wore when all the 1950s 3D movies got shown in syndication back in the early ’80s and yes, lots of things (like skeletons, demons, and Godzilla) reach out (kind of) into the audience. (Hint: Woolfe recommends getting seats right around the middle to best experience the effect.)
Although wearing the glasses can be a bit trying, it’s worth the effort, as Woolfe and his onstage colleagues Kira Hall and Michelle Urbano, backed by expert lighting and sound design, evoke end-time monstrosity and madness in what is probably Toronto’s cutest theatre… Plus, there are card tricks.
PHANTASMAGORIA 3D runs until November 10 at Toronto’s Red Sandcastle Theatre (922 Queen Street East).
