Happenstance Makes Halloween Magic with Dreadful Episodes at 59E59th

Dreadful Episodes makes for a positively delightful evening at the theatre. Mark Jaster, Sabrina Mandell, and the rest of Happenstance Theatre Co have created a perfectly dosed romp through the macabre works of Edward Gorey and others, replete with excellent physical comedy, spellbinding music, and incredible costumes that the cast manages to change in and out of nearly instantaneously.

I'd kill – using any of the various creative methods depicted on stage throughout the show – to have been a fly on the wall during the writing and development of Dreadful Episodes. I'm amazed the team managed to stop laughing for long enough to finish the script. In every sketch, each choice, made by every single performer, is the exact perfect one to maximize hilarity. ( I exaggerate, of course. There must've been a few moments that fell flat, but I cannot recall any amid the sea of bits that worked wonderfully). Even more impressive, none of the great punchline moments are particularly surprising. Of course the crotchety old uncle meets his demise, in lieu of his nieces. Of course the finders of an ancient message-in-a-bottle toss away the paper and skip off with the glassware. The cast makes these ridiculous moments inevitable and executes them with exacting precision, resulting in maximum laughs.

The precision of physicality across the whole cast is incredible from start to finish. Jaster in particular impresses with an uncanny ability to send the audience into stitches with just a smirk or a well-timed raise of an eyebrow. Even sketches that don't feel physically precise are exacting under the surface. In one bit, Mandell portrays a bumbling young girl with a large bow in her hair demonstrating her "Collection of Calamitous Conclusions", wherein she acts out famous deaths. Mandell tripped on her jump rope while entering, but I was 50/50 on whether that was an accident or a choice. Either way, it worked, quickly establish the character, who becomes an instant audience favorite while acting out the beheading of Marie Antoinette, blood spurts and all.

Happenstance's mastery of physical comedy is most on display as an ensemble. Gwen Grastorf and Sarah Olmstead Thomas are perfectly in sync as a pair of twins in the show's opening sketch. Jaster and Jay Owen (and was there a third performer hidden behind a curtain?) thrill as a diminutive executioner and a freshly severed head doing a hilarious -- and creepy -- serial killer ABCs.

But nothing compares to the shows two marquee pieces: the jealous quarrel atop the windy cliffs, and the calamitous round of croquet.

In the "Spilsby Suitor" sketch, two sisters from Spilsby (Olmstead Thomas and Grastorf) stand precariously atop windy cliffs, dresses fluttering in the gusts. This is no wind machine or other movie magic, just the other company memebers, grabbing, pulling, and jostling the clothing to simple but great effect. When an umbrella comes out, we feel instantly that we know what is about the happen... until it is ripped from the sisters' hands and caught by the eponymous Suitor (Jay Owen). Our concern transfers to him, as we watch him engage in a life or death battle with the elements for control of the umbrella. Owen's gift for physicality shines as he bests mother nature and wins the hearts of both sisters. Olmstead Thomas's character boldly steps in front of her sister to accept the umbrella, and the suitor's love. But he has already locked eyes with Grastorf over her shoulder, and we feel those characters falling for each other. The spotlight remains on Olmstead Thomas, who manages to wordlessly take us inside her characters mind and we watch as she processes her jealousy. We see the gears turning as she realizes that her sister stands perilously close to the edge of the cliffs, wind blowing at her back. If the wind were to gust, or perhaps get a helping hand...

Olmstead Thomas' character wins the suitor in the end.

In the calamitous croquet sketch, which comes towards the end of the show, we see a Victorian high-society trio about to engage in a sporting round of croquet on the lawn. But their fourth, "The Ambassador" is late yet again. Not wanting to delay their game, the group presses the Maid (Grastorf) into service. What begins as a friendly game becomes uproariously funny slow motion chaos, as croquet mallets meet chins and stomachs and foreheads and (forgive me) balls. The choreography is stunning; even in slow motion the gag requires perfect timing to work. Musician extraordinaire Stephanie Baird provides a rollicking backing track on a small piano, which she hits with a wooden rod for each liaison of chin and mallet, providing a satisfying thwack to go along with the perfect expressions on the faces of the unfortunate victims. (Jaster, again, is in a class of his own here, displaying suppleness and control of his face rivaling that of Jack Nicholson or Jim Carrey.) The chaotic, violent dance builds on and repeats itself, reminding me of a commedia dell'arte machine, escalating to its hilarious conclusion as the Maid eviscerates Jaster's character with a shiny serving platter, before being declared the croquet victor by Baird, who serves as a sort of narrator for the sketch. It's funny enough to forgive them for bungling the rules of croquet to make the punchline work.

Before the show I wondered how, if at all, the various "episodes" would be linked together. There is certainly a risk with this format that the show might feel disjointed. Dreadful Episodes handles this in two main ways. The simplest is the use of recurring characters, namely Grastorf's aforementioned austere maid. She's not in every sketch – Grastorf plays plenty of other roles – but she pops up again and again, providing a bit of continuity that pulls everything together just enough. More interesting me were the loose narrative threads connecting different sketches to one another.

My favorite of these moments came late in the show, with reappearances of the surviving "Spilsby Suitor" characters. It's clear that time has passed since that fateful day on the cliff; they're married now. But more information has come to light, in the form of humorous telegrams read by Baird, and Owen's character clearly begins to piece together the horrific crime his wife committed, a crime that forms the very bedrock of their relationship. In one sketch, Olmstead Thomas's character catches on to her husbands suspicions, and decides to cut her losses, spiking his drink with a vial of poison that, a few sketches previously, she sang about always keeping on her person. But the cups get shuffled up in an unintentional shell game and the plan is foiled in hilarious –if predictable– fashion.

In a later sketch, Owen seems sure now of his wife's dreadful crime. Distraught, he sees the ghost of the murdered sister in the dress she wore the day they met. The ghost is a puppet, at first held up by unseen hands offstage before being passed off to Owen, who then creates one of the most magical moments of the entire show.

For several minutes we watch him dance alone with a ghost.

It's as haunting as it is captivating. I am sure that credit is due both to Owen's puppetry performance and to whoever constructed the puppet itself, as their efforts combine to form a spellbinding scene where I honestly forgot that he was dancing alone. Even while seeing Owen's hand cradling a handle on the back of the puppet as he waltzes across the stage, it felt like I was watching two people, not one, an effect that only heightened the emotional impact of the scene. The suitor knows ghosts aren't real. Owen and the audience both know he stands alone on stage. Yet he dances. Like a reversal of Shakespearean gravediggers, Owen gives us a poignant, haunting, emotional gut-punch amid the sea of macabre laugher that is most of Dreadful Episodes.

God damn, it is good!

All in all, it would be difficult to craft a production more perfectly suited to kick off the Halloween season than Dreadful Episodes. My only complaint is that its run isn't long enough for me to recommend more folks see it.