The Toronto Theatre Review: Buster Canfield’s Apocalyptic Miracle Show at the Red Sandcastle Theatre
By Ross
A tremendous drum roll begins the show before a flurry of red curtain dramatics usher in the rapturously funny and astonishing Eldritch Theatre production of Buster Canfield’s Apocalyptic Miracle Show at the Red Sandcastle Theatre in Toronto. “The tides of tumult are rising“, we are told, “and the Old Ones are waking from their slumber.” Terrifying! I know and Buster Canfield, mystically and hilariously embodied by Eric Woolfe (Eldritch’s Phantasmagoria 3D!), warns us with determined wordplay pizzazz as he takes center stage, ready to dazzle and save us from destruction. There’s a flurry of madcap words that almost sound real, filling the air with ideas of dread and disaster. What is to become of us? What is to be done? And what will save us from the unparalleled monstrous mayhem that is quickly surrounding us?
Luckily for us all, we have the magical Buster Canfield here to show us the way, and in his most marvelous Apocalyptic Miracle Show, we witness Woolfe’s Buster magically demonstrating the very thing that will deliver us to safety and security, and its all there in the small rectangular box that is his Thaumaturgical Wonder Soap, ready and waiting to be purchased for just $5! It’s truly the miracle we’ve all been waiting for to keep all of us “afloat as the monstrous deluge rises!” What a relief he has arrived, we all sigh in happy delusionment.
I have seen Woolfe’s most recent show at the Red Sandcastle Theatre, Eldritch‘s Macbeth: A Tale Told by an Idiot, and was floored by the majestic way he mixes his impressive magic tricks in with the superb telling of Shakespeare’s tragic tale of Mackers, so when Eldritch Theatre announced the quick return of this show for a few additional performances, I just had to head on over to Leslieville, Toronto and see what this self-described “renowned miracle monger, street sorcerer, and wily warlock of the working folk, Buster Canfield” had in store for us. And I wasn’t disappointed, as he regales us with an evening of masterful trickery, old fashioned songs, “impossible phenomena and feats of mind-boggling magickry.” And, in addition, the possibility of buying his miracle soap that makes ultimate salvation possible, and only with a few rubs and washes daily of his “eldritchly enchanted personal detergent!“
Now, no one can say these fantastical word salad statements like the impossibly talented Woolfe, who layers on the spellbinding sales pitch at the highest level of magical believability. He’s utterly mindblowing, as he unleashes his spellbinding card tricks and sleight of hand sorcery with his honest to god belief that this soap, made from ancient ingredients (that will be unlocked later), will save us all from destruction of the most diabolical order, if those songs and threats are to be believed. But that’s not all he has in store for us. He also unleashes into the world his special guest stars, The Singing Conjoined Carcosa Sisters (Natalia Bushnik and Kathleen Welch), who wonderfully deliver unto us songs reminiscent of radio soap commercials in perfect sideshow harmony. They intoxicatingly “warble their End of Times Tunes” about monsters and flesh-eating zombies most gorgeous and delightfully, in harmonies so tight, “they could only come from a single shared set of lungs!” Truer words have never been spoken, I believe.
Everything about this show is pure fun and amazing pleasure, with the majority of audience members (fortunately not me!) getting roped and cut into the show as expertly as one would expect from this side show marvel, Buster Canfield and his miraculous, life-saving Apocalyptic Miracle Show. So don’t risk all those terrors that await us all as Armageddon arrives into our world. Let him show you the way to “sorcerarily succeed” in survival. All thanks to his “Thaumaturgical Wonder Soap!” It’s only $5, and it’s available on your way out. But buy two, just in case we need twice the savings.
