Bard on the Beach to September 19, 2026
Tickets from $30 at 604-739-0559 or www.bardonthebeach.org
Posted August 9, 2026
The Goblins – Wug, Kragva and Moog – are back in the Douglas Campbell Theatre at Bard on the Beach for another stab at a classic. And stab is the appropriate word because that’s what Spontaneous Theatre (Calgary) does best: stab, skewer, rip, tear, shred and dismantle some very serious drama. Two years ago, it was Goblin: Macbeth; this season it’s Goblin: Oedipus.
I did not much like Goblin: Macbeth – possibly because, as written by Shakespeare, it’s a masterpiece and perhaps we shouldn’t mess with perfection. That being said, hands down, the best sendup of the Scottish play was the 2018 wordless Macbeth Muet, featuring a lot of raw eggs. It was live streamed by Pi Theatre for a while but, alas, seems to have disappeared.
(n spite of being shifted into a post-apocalyptic future, this year’s production of Macbeth, featuring Munish Sharma and Tess Degenstein, is one of the finest I’ve ever seen.)
Goblin: Oedipus opens with Wug, Kragva and Moog (performed by three unnamed actors) riffing on the shortcomings of humankind. Humans have but two genders, say the Goblins, whereas wherever they come from there are seventeen. Some fun with “Oedipus”: is it “Ee-da-puss” or “Ed-a-puss”? How would the Greeks have said it? Okay, let’s go with “Ee-da-puss”. Moog would actually rather be doing a Christmas-based show than a Greek tragedy, but Wug and Kragva are having none of it. “A Christmas Carol” is a non-starter so Goblin: Oedipus it is.
The preamble to Sophocles’ Oedipus Rex is long and winding. After deciding who does what, we meet the Chorus: two rows of six toga and mask-wearing volunteers who, throughout the performance, will be directed to respond appropriately. When “blood” is mentioned, they say “eeuw” and make wiggly hand gestures. “Death” invokes throat-slashing movements. And so on. They are even led through a choral piece with mixed results. By this time, I’m longing for Sophocles’ tale of murder, incest and eye-gouging. Eager for it.
Surprisingly, when the story begins to unfold and in spite of the shenanigans, I finally get caught up. Imagine discovering that you have killed your father, married your mother and produced the four offspring that we know of: Antigone, Ismene, Polynices and Eteocles. It’s enough to make you want to blind yourself with your mother’s hairpins and wander off into the windswept Theban wilds which, of course, is what Oedipus does.
Arguably, the star or stars of any Goblin shows are the masks that Wug, Moog and Kragva wear: rubber-appearing helmets enclosing the whole head and neck. Long noses, pointy ears, eye- and mouth-holes. Bald heads. Astonishingly expressive despite a permanent sort of sneer.
Using the same space – the Douglas Campbell Theatre – as Antigone, the set features what are clearly wedding decorations: multitudes of white candles and baskets of flowers. We are told a wedding party has booked the place immediately after and the Goblins will just have to make the best of it. And they do. On and off, Moog occupies a small platform stage right where some musical instruments – including something that looks like a hamster exercise wheel – is set up. One of my favourite parts in the show is when Moog sees that the show is going in the direction of a film noir murder/thriller and he breaks into cool finger-snapping jazz. Jocasta becomes, briefly, a femme fatale, stubbing out her cigarette with a flirty flourish.
Goblin: Oedipus brings new meaning to “motherfucker” and the word appears throughout, effectively taking the piss out of it. Created by Spontaneous Theatre, the show is clever, funny, irreverent and possibly good for what ails you in these turbulent times. And Kragva definitely gets this right: there’s powerful magic in the theatre with everyone breathing together, laughing or sobbing together in the dark, sharing the same experience at the same time. There’s something holy in that; the Greeks really understood it and so does Spontaneous Theatre even when they turn holy into unholy.