Eric Woolfe in Doc Wuthergloom’s Little Lib’ary of the Damned | Photo courtesy of Eldritch Theatre
Is it too gushy to call Eric Woolfe and Eldritch Theatre a national treasure? It popped into my head and felt genuine, but in text it looks a bit cringey. I can’t un-think it, though, so I’ll just try to dampen the hyperbole here with some blabbity blah! He has certainly proven to be a local treasure—to me, at least. I had decided, since I rarely dress up anymore and don’t like parties, that Doc Wuthergloom’s Little Lib’ary of the Damned would be an appropriate Halloween entertainment for me. It was! And also reinforced my affection for the Eldritch™ brand of Muppety Lovecraftian shenanigans.
I got picked on more than usual this time, but it’s an honour to be at the mercy of someone as clever and engaging as Woolfe—ahem, Doctor Pretorious Wuthergloom. So the spooky Doc is back with a library of sinister tomes; yes, including the much-referenced “Dread Necronomicon of the Mad Arab Abdul Alhazred” in a very Abbott and Costello-eque routine that really shouldn’t work as well as it does.
Woolfe excels at this curmudgeonly, macabre and vaudevillian huckster persona. His close-up magic figures prominently once again; the mentalist tricks are especially impressive. As each ghoulish episode unfolds, Woolfe brandishes a series of adorably eccentric marottes. We invest so much in these cartoonish heads on sticks. He gives them delightfully silly names, distinctive voices, and their designs are endearingly grotesque. The buggy bloodshot eyes in particular really do it for me. There is one puppet that is so monstrously lewd, with such hilariously disconcerting eyeball placement, I all but gasped.
Each story features folks contending with ancient forces beyond their control or understanding that mete out horrific punishments. Hapless schmoes and scheming opportunists alike find themselves driven mad, locked in mummy tombs or torn apart by demons. Woolfe consistently pulls from not just the horror canon, but also a multitude of literary, cinematic and pop culture sources. You’ll find nods to current politics and social ills—from unscrupulous municipal dealings to the manosphere.
I appreciate that familiar Eldritch ethos—all the whimsically gruesome, hand-crafted artifice. Here there be garish lighting, ominous thunderclaps and red felt gore spewing out of spasming puppet bodies. It’s gloriously goofy Grand Guignol, punctuated with menacing plugs for his “Dark Grimoire Digest,” contemptuous little jabs at the captive audience and adorably dark ditties performed on a miniature banjo.
While this doesn’t have the emotional resonance of The Strange & Eerie Memoirs of Billy Wuthergloom, the intense bizarro immersion of Phantasmagoria 3D! or the richly rendered, genre-blending narrative tropes of Requiem for a Gumshoe; this is a solid Eldritch offering with masterful sleight of hand and campy boogity boogity boo!
Doc Wuthergloom’s Little Lib’ary of the Damned
October 30 to November 9, 2025
Red Sandcastle Theatre
(922 Queen Street East)
90 minutes (no intermission)
Eric Woolfe in Doc Wuthergloom’s Little Lib’ary of the Damned | Photo courtesy of Eldritch Theatre