Twenty-five years after its debut, The Strange and Eerie Memoirs of Billy Wuthergloom is back to regale – and spook – audiences with its suburban-gothic charm. Written and performed by Eric Woolfe, the musical horror play blends puppetry, magic, and storytelling to explore the awkwardness of adolescence. Running from January 29 to February 9, 2025, the revival marks a milestone for Eldritch Theatre and offers a deeply personal reflection from its creator.
Going back to Billy . . . and finding fresh horrors
“Billy Wuthergloom was the very first Eldritch Theatre play, and we’ve always wanted to revisit it,” Woolfe shares. “Using Eldritch’s 25th Abominaversary to do so seemed like an obvious choice. Billy has aged as I have aged. It was a young man’s play about the terrors of being young. And now that I am on the cusp of decrepitude and dotterage, the play has a new—I don’t want to say wisdom—let’s say, a deeper understanding to it.” To start, Woolfe is now father to children who are the age of Billy at play’s end – which injects a “whole other layer and perspective of the terrors of adolescence”. At the same time, the gift of middle age is the ability to look back on puberty with a sense of both loss and relief – at never needing to live through it again.
Set in the fictional 1980s town of New Bosford, Billy Wuthergloom tells the story of a boy navigating a haunted adolescence in a succubus-plagued suburb. It’s a coming-of-age tale laced with supernatural horrors. Presented as a retrospective, the adult Billy (Woolfe) recounts his story using puppets and a “Creepy Musician” with glaring red eyes, performed by Spindle Collective’s Kathleen Welch.
While the story feels fantastical, its roots are deeply grounded. “Billy certainly experiences many of the things I experienced growing up,” Woolfe confesses. These are “sometimes very specific embarrassing things, things that are perhaps best left between me and whatever young woman I was seeing at the time they occurred. But,” he smiles wryly, “I like to think that in most of the cases, he makes worse choices than I did.”
And the character of Billy is not the only Woolfe proxy in the play. Adding emotional depth to the tale is Billy’s complicated friendship with best friend and “child-mystic” Hirskill Fischmascher, who lives in a nightmare world and sees into terrors that Billy is a little too ordinary to comprehend completely.
Upending the theatrical status quo
Eldritch Theatre’s blend of horror and humour evokes a delightfully eerie tone, reminiscent of the Seventies children’s TV show The Hilarious House of Frightenstein. Much like that iconic show, Woolfe’s work juxtaposes playful absurdity with the macabre, creating a theatrical experience that evokes giggles and goosebumps. The mix, coupled with a sharp insight, is integral to Woolfe’s storytelling, which is a direct response to mainstream theatre.
“I find most theatre staggeringly boring,” he says candidly. “If art is supposed to be to society what dreams are to the individual, then why are theatres so reluctant to embrace the uncanny and otherworldly?” He offers a simple example: “A play about a troll that lives under your bed [can be] a play about an abusive dad – and the dark parts of yourself that you aren’t ready to face, and fears of the unknown – while also still being a really cool play about a troll that lives under your bed.”
So for Woolfe, horror is an especially powerful lens through which to explore the vulnerability of youth. “At a basic level, fear of monsters and the dark is a feeling we are most attuned to when we are little and helpless, and haven’t yet learned the rules of the universe.” Thus, in Billy Wuthergloom, the titular character’s supernatural trials are stand-ins for the very human, exquisitely adolescent struggles of fitting in, finding identity, and facing one’s demons – both real and imagined. And by pairing these themes with humour, Woolfe softens the hard edge while retaining the story’s depth. The result – “a horror play about passing through childhood” – is “an obvious, funny pairing”.
Puppetry and magic, cornerstones of the Eldritch Theatre ethos, further enhance this experience. “Magic is at its most effective when the viewer attempts to prove to themselves that they are watching some kind of trick, but are unable to discover any possible solution,” Woolfe explains. “Puppetry is different. No one dismisses a puppet performance because they know it’s just a hand in a sock. Knowing it’s just a hand in a sock is what sparks the wonder.”
And the combination of the two is a major source of the electricity powering Eldritch Theatre: “Puppetry and magic performed together is very disarming. They play off each other, and the viewer quickly gets nudged into a special kind of openness. Their imaginations are engaged, and they start to feel things they could never feel watching a play about people arguing around a kitchen sink.” In his experience, audiences connect to a way of seeing the world they maybe haven’t felt since they were little kids. “And of course, little kids are much easier to scare than grownups. Better still, little kids have much more fun being scared than grownups. And those things combined are the secret engine behind every Eldritch Theatre play.”
Bringing female energy to Billy
For this revival of Billy Wuthergloom, Woolfe reunites with his longtime collaborator Mairi Babb, who directs the work. “Mairi is one of my favourite collaborators because she’s smart, funny, and insightful. She understands how puppets work. She’s never afraid to tell me when I’m wrong. And she makes me laugh.”
Also joining the collaboration is Kathleen Welch, who impressed Woolfe with her musical work in Samca during its workshop at Eldritch Theatre. (Read our review of Samca here.) “Kathleen and Mairi bring a female perspective that’s so important in this production. Billy Wuthergloom is a play about the terrors of male adolescence. And the narrator is a little unreliable. So it was important to have as much female energy in the room – to make sure that the story we are trying to tell doesn’t stop and end with the point of view of the somewhat myopic teenage narrator.”
At its core, The Strange and Eerie Memoirs of Billy Wuthergloom is an idiosyncratic and darkly comedic exploration of growing up. But as we close our conversation, Woolfe challenges audiences to tune into a quieter, deeper tale lurking beneath the puppets, the magic and the humour.
“There’s another, sadder story around its edges,” he reflects. “It’s about feeling broken and alone, and knowing you’ll never fit in . . . but there might be a person you love and need to look out for, who keeps you holding on.”
Eldritch Theatre’s The Strange and Eerie Memoirs of Billy Wuthergloom makes a welcome return on January 29 to February 9, 2025. Tickets are available at eldritchtheatre.ca.
© Arpita Ghosal, Sesaya Arts Magazine 2025
