Penny Dreadful's Etherdome is a lunatic comedy about three 19th century quacks competing with each other to find a pain-free anesthetic for surgeons and dentists. The play embraces elements of Grand Guignol, vaudeville, buffoonery and Punch and Judy to tell its bizarre, bloodstained story. Think the Three Stooges on psychedelics.
The three raffishly-clad doctors are William T.G. Morton (Dennis Herdman), Horace Wells (Denise Kennedy, in male drag) and Charles T. Jackson (the saturnine Philippe Spall). Desperate to win fame and fortune, the three oddballs try out various potions and gasses on each other (and on the audience), with ghoulishly hilarious results. Teeth are pulled, limbs sawed off, brains numbed, during the course of the show, which is obviously not for the faint of heart.
This kind of physical comedy is hard to do well, but the Penny Dreadful cast makes it look easy. Their innate feel for comedy, strong voices and expert timing and delivery draw waves of laughter from the audience and make the show zip along from beginning to end.
Etherdome also benefits from its fiendishly clever set, its period-perfect costumes and atmospheric lighting effects. Kudos, as well, to director Mick Barnfather for having welded the show's varying components into a swiftly moving, snappy whole.
Penny Dreadful's Etherdome is rude, raucous and funny as hell.
