The Grinning man is a musical adaptation of Victor Hugo’s, L’Homme qui Rit, (the grinning man), which follows a man named Grinpayne, played by Louis Maskell, who must travel to find the man who deformed his face as young child and murdered his parents. It is performed in the intimate space of the Trafalgar studios by a cast of 16 and directed by Tom Morris. The play is most notable for its use of eccentric puppetry of young children and animals. The story was first written by Victor Hugo in 1868, he was a French republican of the 19th century who revealed the injustices of the classes in France before the revolution. 

We first meet Grinpayne as a puppet child, controlled by his older self, who has been separated from his mother before boarding a ship. The audience immediately sympathises for this character as Hugo has made him to seem as an outcast from society. He finds a baby on the snowy floor, who has been blinded by the cold, named Dea. Just before he is about to die in the cold, he is rescued by a man called Ursus and his dog Mojo. Mojo is a large puppet controlled by two men who are hidden by dark clothing in the dog. Together, they seek revenge for the murder of Grinpayne’s parents and travel to the city of Londonn.

The play gains its genre of dark comedy by its use of satirical comedy. This is most commonly seen through the kingdoms clown, Barkilphedro, played by Julian Bleach, who often breaks the fourth wall and speaks to the audience about the horrors working as a servant to the king and his wish to one day become a lord. The audience will often burst out in laughter at his darkly take on the world.