Shockheaded Peter
These dark tales are made even darker by a production in which all the actors wear funereal black and whiteface and accent every moment of horror and cruelty. In the thumb-sucking story, the boy is represented by a rather sweet-faced life-size marionette with oversize thumbs. The cute, guileless puppet easily wins our hearts, yet it’s easier–and funnier–to do cruel things to him than to a live actor, like snip off his thumbs while he opens his eyes wide and wails.
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The tales are told partly through mime, partly through elaborate, quite stunning puppetry–both references to the century-old panto shows of English theater–and are accompanied by the Tiger Lillies, throwbacks in look and sound to Weimar Germany: their tunes are bargain-basement Kurt Weill. (Often acting as a sort of Greek chorus, they narrate or comment on the action–though in general their lyrics are better than the rather unsophisticated music.)
