Thrillpeddlers show that the Grand Guignol can still disturb

Next on the bill, The Old Women by Christopher Holland (adapted from the seminal French Grand Guignol play by de Lorde and Alfred Binet, Crime dans une Maison de Fous ou Les Infernales), provides a macabre contrast to Coward's comedy. Unraveling in the sepulchral shadows of a lunatic asylum run by ascetic nuns and skeptical medics, the play concerns an innocent young inmate's ghastly fate at the hands of three delusional old crones. Director Russell Blackwood doesn't skimp on the Hammer Horror aesthetic in his take on this classic. With their lumpy bosoms, frazzled wigs, and warped faces, the titular hags (played by Eric Tyson Wertz, James Toczyl, and The Indra) are truly creepy. Margery Fairchild, meanwhile, makes for the perfect ingénue with her sweetness and wide-eyed fear. From the lonely glimmer of a stove burning in the darkness to the jangle of a nun's keys, Chris Paulina's powerful sound and lighting effects help to heighten the drama's slow-simmering build toward its inevitable conclusion. The gory climax doesn't come as a surprise, yet it's still yucky.

The most enticing aspect of FLAMING SIN — and Grand Guignol theater in general — is the way, if done well, it messes with our emotions. If The Old Women makes for a chilling chaser to Coward's warm comedy, the head-spinning array of bite-sized plays and demented cabaret acts that follows the two main acts further douses us with showers of hot and cold water. Most memorable among these the night I attended the show were: a dark comedy by Rob Keefe titled First Day in which the aforementioned house guillotine makes its standard appearance; a ribald drinking song lustily performed by gorgeous drag queen Valentine; a toe-curling scenario in which the bare ass of performer Eric Tyson Wertz (who could be a disciple of Antonin Artaud, a member of a sadomasochistic sect, or both) is treated to a five-minute walloping by a hairbrush-wielding woman in a bear costume; and an ex-cop's real-life account of the satanic curse that a dying drug addict placed on the building in which the theater is now housed. Anyone left standing at 11 p.m. is welcome to stay on for a screening of Thrillpeddlers' fascinating 20-minute Grand Guignol documentary, a "Special Feature" on the Tim Burton Sweeney Todd DVD.

"It is not necessarily what will happen but how we get there that matters," write Richard J. Hand and Michael Wilson (italics theirs) in their new book, London's Grand Guignol. The plots may be predictable, the blood ketchuplike, and the dancing skeletons kitschy. Yet the journey the Thrillpeddlers take us on when they're at the top of their game is as titillating as it is formulaic. World War I is long gone, but in a society equally upset by conflict and crime, the tidily packaged faux carnage of the Grand Guignol theater offers sweet relief. It allows us to vent our primal impulses in the relative safety of the theater.