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Our narrator Silas Leech, an attorney represented as a besuited crocodile, introduces this unusual testament. Instead of composing a standard list of bequests, the late Nathaniel Axe has decreed that each attendee will have his inheritance revealed by a sinister, masked figure. Silas listens from another room as the fortune-teller begins to arrange a stack of tarot cards. In gory and Gorey fashion, the fortune-teller prophesies a gruesome and appropriate death for each of the assembled: choking for the gluttonous, impalement for the wrathfuSl.

If, as in many a fairy tale, the story structure repeats itself wearily, Sanko and his team provide ample recompense. He and erstwhile Oingo Boingo frontman Danny Elfman offer a delightfully eerie score that tickles and alarms. Irish songster Gavin Friday lends his gravelly tones to the narration. The design team has built costumes and sets with any number of sinister trims and frills. Indeed, for those souls with a taste for the elegantly macabre, attendance is highly advised. To miss it—now that would be a sin.