Eric Woolfe in The Call Centre of Cthulhu | Photo by Jack Woolfe Photography
I realized something while watching Eldritch Theatre’s current low-fi spook show, The Call Centre of Cthulhu: Creator-performer Eric Woolfe holds a similar place, in my affections, to Stephen King. He’d perhaps prefer that I compare him to H.P. Lovecraft, but that’s such an obvious aspect of his brand. Also, I don’t like Lovecraft, whereas I do like King and Woolfe—as both artists and humans. There are plenty of King short stories and novels I consider great, but even when the writing is, uh, not quite “literature,” the places he takes me are ominously cozy and familiar, having gone there with him for decades. He’s also a genuinely smart, caring guy and values—quite deeply, I sense—our fandom.
Woolfe’s got a similar ethos. In his oeuvre, The Call Centre of Cthulhu doesn’t rank high for me, but that’s inconsequential. Woolfe’s presence, encased in Melanie McNeill’s scrappy Eldritch™ aesthetic, is cozy and familiar. The “Dread Necronomicon of the Mad Arab Abdul Alhazred,” that old bugaboo, is there for me to cling to, like a ghoulish security blanket, because of course it is. And even when things are coming apart at the seams, as they are a bit here, I cherish the tangible unreliability of stuff and Woolfe’s masterful harnessing of the theatrical potential of, well, stagy mishaps.
I had heard that there were a number of more intense technical glitches during the first few performances, which Woolfe handled with his usual self-aware panache. The bugs had been mostly worked out, I guess, when I caught this. There’s a live video feed projected from an on-stage camera phone, which proclaimed its depleting battery power during the finale, but Woolfe and his primed audience are more than capable of handling such trifling matters.
Woolfe, whose personae are more often sinister and curmudgeonly, has a refreshingly affable and timid deal as Irving Irving. This name, though quite adorable, seems like a discomfiting allusion to Lolita’s Humbert Humbert (not sure if that’s intentional) which gives this endearingly schlubby guy a dark edge despite his affable nebbish-ness, as if we are being warned against trusting his account here. He also feels very Dr. Suess coded, with his Lorax-like bushy eyebrows and mustache and a ratty, pastel cardigan.
Eric Woolfe in The Call Centre of Cthulhu | Photo by Jack Woolfe Photography
Irving Irving is a call centre agent, adrift in a sea of dangling tin can phones, who spends his baleful time there answering all manner of strange requests. We meet his creepy as fuck crush, fellow agent, Moxie, and a bunch of freakish callers, whom Woolfe portrays with his stalwart band of bloodshot and bug-eyed hand puppets. This is where the live video feed splits our attention. It adds another visual dimension to the schtick and plays a far more crucial role during the climax—when Irving Irving confronts the cosmically horrific Elder God Cthulhu—by immersing us in illustrations from a cumbersome, unhinged perspective that wouldn’t quite be possible without the projected tracking shots.
Woolfe’s audience interactions and close-up magic are, as I’ve come to expect, an integrated aspect of the creepy shenanigans and very enchanting here. I was especially impressed, as I always am, by the mentalist tricks. I’ve never looked into the techniques involved in this sort of thing and I’m not sure I ever will—though I generally pride myself on knowing how the sausage is made, I also appreciate having my mind occasionally blown.
The sense of awkward clutter is off the charts here. Especially in the intimate confines of the Red Sandcastle Theatre, it’s a disconcerting thrill to witness Woolfe negotiate his surroundings, bumping into the hung cans and the desk and macabre bric-a-brac of McNeill’s design. The clashing green and pink lighting throws these antics into garish relief.
Have I preferred other Eldritch Theatre shows? Yes. Indubitably. But, nonetheless, I dig being in this world, in the same way I love returning to Castle Rock or Derry. The individual shows can be taken as they are, of course, but there is a cumulative appeal here you can only appreciate over time—a whole greater than the sum of its parts.
The Call Centre of Cthulhu
October 28 to November 8, 2026
Red Sandcastle Theatre
(922 Queen Street East)
90 minutes (no intermission)
Eric Woolfe in The Call Centre of Cthulhu | Photo by Jack Woolfe Photography