Theatre

Shockheaded Peter, Tramway, Glasgow

T

DID I imagine it - or did several adults instinctively tuck their thumbs deep inside their fists merely at the mention of the ''great, long-legged Scissor Man'' . . . And as Martyn Jacques's uncanny falsetto tones gleefully trilled ''snip, snip'' - and poor Suck-a-Thumb's severed digits hit the floor - did those adults feel themselves spinning back into the ranks of childhood, where awful warnings were paraded at the first sign of a heinous misdemeanour, like nail-biting or nose-picking or Telling Fibs.

For although the fabric and inspiration for this deliciously grotesque package of cautionary tales comes from the nineteenth-century writings of Heinrich Hoffmann, the exuberant goriness, the dire retribution that attends all naughty boys and girls, is timeless in its appeal, its hold on our imaginations. A glance at any High Street video store will confirm that.

Here, a quick-witted and hugely resourceful creative team - headed up by directors Phelim Mcdermott and Julian Crouch - has decided to root its ''junk opera'' in the mellow dramatic flourishes and stage machinery of Victorian theatre. It works a treat. A self-contained stage - the proscenium arch peppered with sly little doors - houses acts of hectic carnage and fateful misfortune as, one after another, wilful little children are briskly done to death as a result of Not Doing What They Were Told. Their demise is tunefully chronicled by Jacques and the Tiger Lillies in songs reminiscent of fairgrounds, beer gardens, music hall - which heightens the edge of black comedy so leeringly engendered by the cadaverous, grandiloquent MC of Julian Bleach.

Yet, while we chortle at the grand guignol of these moral tales, the sad story of neglected, unloved Shockheaded Peter twines its only reproachful moral through the piece: children are human beings, not toys or designer accessories - they need care and stimulus.

I recommend regular doses of theatre-going myself - and this would make a cracking good start.