‘The House’ Review: Hauntings, Humor, and Hand Puppets

Imagine a room cloaked in darkness. The lights go up, revealing a stage that’s bare except for one object: an intricate house, its door creaking and its curtains fluttering. Within the house, silhouettes move, their shadows black against the warm light that fills the structure. The scene is an unnerving mixture of familiar and eerie, the rhythms of home mixing with an unsettling sense of foreboding. Something dark lurks here, a secret or a mystery. If chilling things have not yet unfolded, they soon will.

Over the next hour, this prophecy is fulfilled: Murder is committed, ghosts rise from the dead, family turns on family, and a robbery morphs into a quest for vigilante justice. It is a show filled with jump scares, betrayals, and moments of laughter that balance out the performance’s darker themes. And yet, the most intriguing — and unexpectedly beguiling — part? The show is performed entirely with puppets.

To many, the idea of attending a puppet show may seem childish. The words “puppet show” likely summon visions of finger puppets bobbing along in a clunky, exaggerated performance. But “The House,” an adult horror comedy puppet show by the Sofie Krog Teater, will make you reconsider everything you think you know about puppetry.

The show follows a covetous woman and her husband who, upon realizing that his elderly aunt has cut them out of her will, decide to murder her and rewrite her final testament. The plan goes disastrously wrong when the aunt’s spirit possesses the family dog and — determined to get vengeance and set things right — conspires with her two bumbling sons to expose her nephew’s treachery.

“The House” emerged as the result of a collaboration between Puppet Showplace Theater, where its Boston performances were hosted, Sandglass Theater, Mayo Street Arts, the Chicago International Puppet Arts Festival, and Sofie Krog Teater. The show featured two performances in Brookline on Sept. 29 and 30, and will appear at other US-based venues later this year.

Sofie Krog Teater is a leading puppet theater from Denmark, spearheaded by Sofie Krog herself. Krog is the artistic director, puppet maker, and puppeteer behind “The House,” joined onstage by fellow puppeteer David Faraco. Faraco is also the show’s scenographer and technician.

It is astonishing that such a robust show could be performed by just two people. The performance includes eight puppets, each with detailed, elaborate costuming and a range of moving parts. The dog, for instance, does more than trot around the stage — its ears perk and its tail wags. The puppets are expressive, making hand gestures, moving objects, and conveying impressive emotion. In Krog and Faraco’s capable hands, the inanimate come to life, filling the stage with their vivid presence.

Despite its intense subject matter, the show is unexpectedly funny. Horror-comedy is a hard genre to perfect, but “The House” strikes the ideal balance between laughter and chills. For example, one scene during which the dog — manipulated by the spirit of the aunt — attempts to convey her niece’s evil scheme to her sons using a chalkboard and a game of charades had audience members wheezing.

As the title implies, one of the most entrancing aspects of “The House” is the set itself. Adjacent to the home is the family’s crematorium, which functions as part of their funerary business. Throughout the show, the structure rotates, revealing both the outer facade of the house and its inner organs. Within are meticulously crafted furniture, decor, bedding — everything you would expect to find in a home. The house becomes its own character, watching and absorbing everything that unfolds inside. The show’s conclusion epitomizes this personification.

“This is all that my old walls remember of this particular tale,” a booming voice echoed through the theater — the voice of the house, one might infer. There was a beat of silence as the room returned to total darkness.

“Oh, and be careful when you get home,” the voice added eerily. “Perhaps one day your house will tell tales, too.”

—Staff writer Makenna J. Walko can be reached at [email protected].