Casual Violence: Choose Death

Gloriously bleak and black, this is a weird and wonderful show more reminiscent of things like Charles Addams and Edward Gorey comic strips than any of Casual Violence's sketch-group peers.

Under film noir-style lighting, Casual Violence take us through the grim demise of six intense and twisted characters to the tones of a creepy cabaret keyboardist. Of the range of random and hugely backstoried characters, the one that stands out is insane armless serial killer Bad Legs McGinty, and his menacing yet slightly sexually charged relationship with captor Detective Shoehorn, which owes as much to the Wizard of Oz as it does to Jack Nicolson in Chinatown (there are such a broad range of influences in this show, it's hard to keep track).

Then there are the Siamese twin assassins, who are as far from Farrelly Brothers as you could care to imagine; the odious dying father in his mansion full of taxidermied relatives; and the desperate bubble-gun seller ripped straight out of post-Soviet melodrama.

All delivered flawlessly, passionately, and completely straight.  Gloriously dark and twisted, not filled with belly laughs but an unexpected trip into the bizarre. I can’t say how much I enjoyed it.