“Are you on your own? Would you like to sit here?” The last time I heard those words I was about to come in for the combined attentions of the unhinged offspring of the House of Usher (courtesy of Punchdrunk). Still, I’m not one to turn down a challenge – especially not one coming from a nice young man in long underwear and sturdy boots. So shunning the relative safety of the back rows I took me a seat in the Gilded Cage Saloon.
Tombstone Tales is a graveyard cabaret, part ballad-opera, part burlesque and part clown show. Writer and director Carl Heap has made a cadavers’ vaudeville that focuses on the lives (and deaths) of the unglamorous and unsung of the American Old West. There’re shadow puppets, magic tricks, folk dances, a motley array of accents, cowboys, bandits, apaches and a masacree – but (despite the presence of Wyatt Earp and his brothers) not the gunfight at (or near) the OK Corral. Miriam Nabarro’s set is shabbily atmospheric, and its saloon bar and stage give the boisterous cast acres of space to muck around in. Heap’s rhyming verses and Joe Townsend’s score jog along with inventive homespun charm and morbidly wicked black humour.
This show made me laugh out loud, the company are talented and tireless, and The Song of Gold Dollar is worth the price of admission in itself. The latter stories are more sombre, with the poignantly pathological tale of The Golden Stairs, and even a suspicion of a socially-relevant moral. But if you thought that what The Masque of the Red Death lacked was a cross-dressed bar-room catfight, then you’re in for a treat with Tombstone Tales. It’s an uncommon and outlandish festive offering, fusing audience participation and sing-along with a light-heartedly lugubrious tour through the forgotten grave-dwellers of Tombstone. Check your guns at the door, grab a glass of sipping liquor, pull up a chair, and enjoy.
Tombstone Tales and Boothill Ballads is at the Arcola Theatre until 20 December.
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