Dreadful Episodes

Gwen Gastorf, Mark Jester, Sarah Olmsted Thomas (Photo: Leah Huete)

By Fern Siegel (Posted Oct. 20, 2025)

Comedy of the macabre, an Edward Gorey specialty, is celebrated in Dreadful Episodes, thanks to the Happenstance Theater Company. Now off-Broadway at the 59E59 Theaters, the show mines Gorey’s playful depravity with flair.

The ensemble clicks, with vignettes that showcase violent intentions — the dangers of windy cliffs, croquet gone wrong or exiting unwanted spouses.

The performance begins with the talented Stephanie Baird on piano and Mark Jaster playing the musical saw. She’s on watch for any deadly impulses — and luckily for the audience, they are in abundance. The set design is spare, with Victorian-style costumes setting the stage. Each act is singular and on-point. Every piece is announced, vaudeville-style, with a placard. And we look forward with anticipation.

What’s impressive is how much emotional and physical humor the company extracts from the material — be it an ill-fated romance or encouraging the young to play dangerous games, sanctioned with murderous intent. “This Spilsby Suitor” ends with a refined young woman pushing her sister off a cliff to secure her mate. In fact, much of the laugh-out-loud fun is the sinister, wry looks — it’s a visual feast of intentionality. Dreadful Episodes is creepy, often wacky and always clever.

Deftly directed by Sabrina Mandell and Mark Jaster, the company’s founders, the rest of the cast, including Jay Owen, Gwen Grastorf and Sarah Olmsted Thomas, brilliantly play a variety of roles. The trick is to introduce each with a sly tone that marries dreadful to hilarity. The visual elements, given the sparse dialogue, speak volumes.

For instance, in “The Curious Cousins,” a couple (Mandell and Owen) at La Triviata discover a corpse with a knife sticking out of it. Unfazed, they are oblivious to its meaning. The vignettes are carefully stylized — we imagine the worst within a satiric framework. That balancing act takes skill, fast costume changes and precise timing.

The eerie narrative is enhanced by Kris Thompson’s lighting and Mandell’s excellent costume design. The music is an added plus — original compositions by Karen Hansen are enhanced by “Who Killed Cock Robin Quartette” from 1880 and “Dancing the Devil Away,” written for the 1927 Broadway production Lucky.

Through November 2, the running time is 75 minutes without intermission — and Dreadful Episodes leaves you wanting more.