Review – 3 Tales of Woe

A shadow puppetry performance seems like a perfect fit for the writings of Poe, Dickens and Lovecraft. They are the masters of the macabre and menacing, so silhouettes are an ideal way to guide you through their stories, without restricting the monsters of your own imagination.

Therefore, 3 Tales of Woe is a great concept, with a lot of potential. I won’t say the show was without merit – in fact the set design and the puppetry were actually very good. Sadly, the acceptable performances of the puppets were overshadowed (forgive the pun) by the hideously bad pre-recorded readings of the tales themselves. The show features Poe’s The Raven, Dickens’ A Christmas Carol, and Lovecraft’s Azathoth. Read by 3 different Australian male voices, all three were riddled with pacing problems, Aussie drawls and sometimes just a basic misunderstanding of emphasis. On top of this, the music behind them was often badly mixed, and overwhelmed the voice in sometimes integral parts. Knowing the first two stories quite well, as many do thanks to The Simpsons and Bill Murray, was little help, because it invites only comparisons. Better though, than not knowing the story at all, because the audio made it tough to follow.

All things aside, it was a nice idea and the improvements are possible – I’m hoping they come back next Fringe with some of the problems worked out. A live reading perhaps?