It’s a puppet – Wiltons Music Theatre showing ‘The Depraved Appetite of Tarrare the Freak’

Wiltons Music Theatre is showing The Depraved Appetite of Tarrare the Freak this month.

Wilton Music Theatre is a very old interesting building with its old brick work, crumbling walls, old beams, etc. The theatre is quite small but has a very intimate feel the seats though are quite uncomfortable.

The Depraved Appetite of Tarrare the Freak

I went along to see an English opera on The Depraved Appetite of Tarrare the Freak with the story played out with puppets.

Once upon a time

Spoiler alert……

It is based on a true story of a freak who eats things from pocket watch’s to live animals who gets signed up to be a soldier. His assignment was to take a secret document over the enemy lines in his stomach but he gets caught by Germans. The secret documents are eventually retrieved by the Germans when Tarrare poops it out. Unfortunately he was used by the French and the message revealed was along the lines of ‘you are a freak and would never be trusted with a secret document’. The Germans never kill him in the end as they find it amusing for him to stay alive and live with his freakness. A two headed lady from the freak show that he came from comes to collect him as she loves him but alas the two headed woman gets shot by one of the Germans. He returns back to England feeling very used and emotionally upset and seeks a doctor to help him with his hungar problem but alas this also ends in disaster and he ends up eating a child that he befriends who died from eating his precious fork that his two headed girlfriend gave him. He ate the child as of his odd hungar that he suffers with and I think also to recover his fork from his love. He then goes on the run but returns years later to the hospital to go under the knife as he said the fork was killing him that’s inside him and he ends up dying on the surgical table.

The end…… my verdict

The story as bizarre as it was it was true and this made me want to hear the story right to the end which I am pleased I did and I will be reading up about this freak in more detail in the next few days. The opera singing was great and my first time I have ever seen an opera at the theatre. The puppetry even though the puppets all looked ghoulish like dying zombies/skeletons it was done very well.

I highly recommend to anyone that loves horror type stories, true stories, opera and puppetry.

Visit Wiltons Music Hall website for upcoming shows.