Bazuka Joe remembers keenly when he first became aware of artist Edward Gorey. As with so many people, it was thanks to PBS’s Mystery!, an anthology series whose animated opening credits came from Gorey’s sharply cartoonish, delightfully macabre black-and-white drawings.
“I was a little kid, and I very distinctly recall being like, What is this? I could not get close enough to the TV,” says the 44-year-old choreographer and writer. (Bazuka Joe is his longtime stage name from the burlesque world.) “People were dying left and right, accompanied by jaunty, mysterious music. It said a lot without saying anything.”
Last year, Bazuka and his partner in artistic crime, Jennifer Friedrich, parlayed that fascination into The Uncanny Attic, a thrilling and ghastly revue they jointly produced and directed. Featuring dance, puppetry, clowning, and more, the Gorey-inspired show sold out all its performances at the modest Newport Theater in Lake View. Now the pair have leveled up: They just formed their own production company, Beautifully Gruesome, and are bringing Attic to Steppenwolf Theatre February 20–22 as part of its LookOut series spotlighting eclectic work from lesser-known artists.
It was their shared penchant for gothic humor that drew Bazuka and Friedrich together artistically. “I first saw little Gorey books when I was hanging out at Quimby’s Bookstore back in the ’90s,” says Friedrich, 53, who as a performer combines burlesque and puppetry at Newport under her stage name, the Bunny Royale. “I rediscovered him again after I had kids. I was the mom who didn’t allow her kids to watch Disney movies — but they were encouraged to watch everything Tim Burton. My best friend gifted me The Gashlycrumb Tinies, and it was just like, Oh yeah!”
Indeed, that 1963 Gorey title forms the spine of this show. The world’s most morbid alphabet book, Tinies traces the tragic ends of 26 children in rhyming couplets. To wit: “A is for Amy who fell down the stairs / B is for Basil assaulted by bears.” Attic’s clever premise imagines the whys and wherefores behind these foul fates in a pastiche with four distinct chapters, A through D. It’s all wrapped in a framing device, as two movers sort through ephemera in the spooky attic of an abandoned old mansion.
The conceit enables Bazuka and Friedrich, who also perform in the show, to work with a wide array of talent. For example, arrogant ballerina Amy is played by pro dancer Sunny Haelstorm. Desmond, an oddball child who never stops talking, comes to (brief) life thanks to performance artist Connor Konz, whose absurd monologue is both wickedly funny and heartbreakingly sad.
Also in the mix: a puppet sequence, a stop-motion animated interlude, narration and foley effects by a pair of raccoons, and two slapstick artists — the brilliant Tyler Garamella and Meaghan Morris of Hot Clown Company — as the movers. Meanwhile, the show’s metatheatrical gothic horror aesthetics pay homage to Gorey, who grew up in Chicago, won a Tony in 1977 for his design work on Dracula, and died in 2000 at age 75.
“The Uncanny Attic is a perfect fit for what we do,” says Steppenwolf’s LookOut producer, Patrick Zakem. “It plays with form and audience expectations while smashing genres and providing a container for incredible standalone performances. It’s the epitome of Chicago: unruly, resourceful, downright weird.”
Word of mouth spread quickly after the show debuted last summer. For the encore autumn dates, “even the bartenders started dressing up in grayscale clothing with a Victorian edge,” laughs Bazuka. Adds Friedrich: “Now that we’ve got proof of concept, we know for sure: People who love Gorey love Gorey, and they show up.” That enthusiasm solidified the pair’s long-term goal for Beautifully Gruesome to finish the entire Gashlycrumb alphabet. The next installment (Ernest through Hector, meeting grim deaths from leeches and thugs) will premiere at Newport in August.
In a stroke of fate, the Attic remount closes on a date that will resonate with die-hard Gorey fans: February 22 marks the centennial of his birth. Will the run conclude with an exploding birthday cake? He would certainly approve.