Wed. May 16, 007
SF
The wind howled like God blowing on an empty beer bottle tonight. I gripped the wheel and navigated the Pacific Coast Highway in Blinky’s “boat with two couches,” trying like hell to keep to the right of the double yellow line. I’d just visited a friend’s house, nestled quite literally on the shore of the ocean, in the sand on a rocky cove in the shadow of mountains. Earlier, we’d watched an old guy push a limp and lifeless seal carcass from the hard-packed shore back into the roiling waves. When the body hit — sploosh! — blood and salt water spewed everywhere.
Turns out it was Ray Bandar, that dude who works for the California Academy of Sciences who they just featured in the Chronicle a couple weeks ago — he’s got a house full of animal skulls from all over the planet. He’d just beheaded the seal to harvest the cranium.
Landlocked fog rested atop green peaks like tinsel; yellow and white lights from houses and shopping centers wrapped the roads, twinkling in the clear-atmosphere layer below the mist. And I thought: What a wonderfully spooky region we live in. Whether hugging the craggy oceanside or blanketing the redwoods, the fog makes everything rather … Tolkeinsian, don‘t you think?
Take any such mystical aura of uncertainty, and add the spectre of murder. Or rape, or torture, or incest, or blood-spattered mad scientists beheading and re-animating (seal?) corpses. Good times, right?
That’s why, in Paris from 1897 to 1962, the rubes couldn’t get enough of Grand Guignol theatre. It scared the crap out of them, and they loved it. The Thrillpeddlers are arguably the premiere torch-bearers for Grand Guignol in the world — the only company who regularly resurrects Grand Guignol plays from the dead (ba-dump, chink) and crafts new pieces in tribute to the style. And they’re based here in San Francisco. Their current show, now playing at the Hypnodrome Thursdays through Saturdays, ends on June 2 — and that’s it. No extensions.
Also! The Thrillpeddlers have just been voted by the Weekly’s readers to be the best theater company in the Bay. I saw the show last weekend, and I’ve got to say, I’m’a’ tell Big Daddy he’s got to go see it — and I usually only tell him he’s got to go see something if it involves zombies. The latest critical review of the Thrillpeddlers’ new show, Hypnodrome Head Trips, sits online here (second listing down) …
… it’s pretty right-on, so I won’t bother writing what’s already been well-written about them. I’ll just say the show made me clap like an undead seal, and then I’ll quote Silent but Violent, who accompanied me to the play.
“That was rad,” she whispered into my ear after the show. “And I HATE theater.”
