A Penny Dreadful runs Saturdays Dec. 13, Dec. 20 and Jan. 3 at 6pm
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Hideout Theatre’s most recent student MainStage production, A Penny Dreadful, is the brainchild of longtime Hideout teacher and performer Troy Miller, who shared with us his top 5 inspirations for the show:
1. Hammer Films – Hammer may be the quintessential film production unit specifically associated with the horror genre, often taking their cue from published literary works. I think “Horror of Dracula” is their best, and one of the best Dracula interpretations – Christopher Lee has very little dialogue: it’s all in his face. That’s something we’ve emphasized in our show.
2. Edgar Allen Poe – Poe’s works (both literary and some of the film adaptations) drip with atmosphere and have rather epic climaxes to their intimate tales of madness and doomed love – I love “The Fall of the House of Usher” and how, quite literally, the house crumbles and falls into the mire at the end.
3. “Rebecca” – Alfred Hitchock’s film hints at the supernatural, and lures a very innocent character into what may be a very sinister and deadly environment. The hinting at (and then sufficiently explaining away) what might be too terrible to comprehend is a key element of how scenes play out in the show.
4. “Creepy” and “Eerie”– These were horror anthology magazines, comic books, that I used to read as a kid – kind of like “Tales from the Crypt” – good lurid, spooky stuff, with tongue-in-cheek humor, sort of what a modern “penny dreadful” might look like. I liked the covers which were vividly and colorfully illustrated: to me, gothic horror is not black and white, it’s deep reds and greens and blues.
5. Scooby Doo – Yeah, I know. But gosh darn it, I’ve got a soft spot for it. And basically, Scooby and the gang were always investigating classic horror goings-ons (ghosts, vampires, werewolves) that were revealed, ultimately, to be some half-baked scheme. Sure, much gothic horror is supernatural (“Dracula”), but there’s an equal amount that’s real people doing vile things, all in the name of love or justice… or just good ‘ol fashioned madness!