“Witch Wartsmith’s Halloween Spooktacular”at The Puppet Co. in Glen Echo Park. Photo by Liz Dapo.
“Witch Wartsmith’s Halloween Spooktacular”at The Puppet Co. is a fun, delightfully eerie Halloween event being presented the entire month of October. It can be best described as an Ed Sullivan-style variety show (a talent competition, of sorts), but with macabre thematics tempered just enough to make it fun but not too scary for the little ones. There are puppets of scarecrows, witches, and ghosts, all dancing in separate acts. There is even an Invisible Man! A skeleton hand and arm hold up classic applause signs for audience engagement, while at the same time, this is a modern, multi-media presentation using video technology far beyond the traditional puppet show. During the variety acts, there is a fun reference to Jackie O—not the press’s moniker for the former First Lady Jacklyn Kennedy Onassis, but the Jackie O’s as three pumpkins which glow in the dark and dance in unison. (The name is also a play on Jack O’Lantern, fully in the Halloween spirit.) Circus-like elements such as a puppet riding a unicycle on stage and juggling a ball into the air add to the merriment.
…a highly enjoyable romp for children…
There are also fun spooky wordplays made “Inner Sanctum”-style, as when the host welcomes “Boys and Ghouls.” In fact, one of the very fun elements of the show is not so much how it shocks and scares children but how it prepares them for vintage Halloween entertainment when they reach the right age. For example, there are busts of “Boris and Vince,” sculpted references to cinematic horror icons Boris Karloff (Hollywood’s “Frankenstein”) and Vincent Price (star of “The House on the Haunted Hill”). A routine uses “Putting on the Ritz” in a way which channels “Young Frankenstein.” Several appearances of Harold Scarecrow feature the background music of Gounod’s “Funeral March of a Marionette”—appropriate enough for a puppet show by its very title, this was the famous theme song also used for the suspenseful television series “Alfred Hitchcock Presents.” References to “An American Werewolf in London,” Michael Jackson’s “Thriller,” and Britney Spears’s “Toxic!” also abound.
The performance is not very involved in the way of story, but the atmospherics of an old mansion, candles, a skeleton on the wall, and orange-and-black Halloween schematics (including in a stained glass window) are simply “spooktacular.” Puppeteers and voice actors Mollie Greenberg, Kristina Hopkins, Momo Nakamura, and Danny Pushkin add their considerable talents to the production, which is superbly directed and choreographed by Kirk Bixby. All in all, “Witch Wartsmith’s Halloween Spooktacular” is a highly enjoyable romp for children—the perfect seasonal activity as the weather chills and the autumnal rains call out for diverting indoor activities.
Running time: Approximately 45 minutes with no intermission.
“Witch Wartsmith’s Halloween Spooktacular” runs through October 31, 2022 at The Puppet Co. in Glen Echo Park, 7300 MacArthur Blvd, Glen Echo, MD 20812 Performances are Thursdays and Fridays at 10:30 a.m.; Saturdays and Sundays at 11:30 a.m. and 1 p.m. For more information and tickets, click here.
