Talk:Short Story:Theatre of Cruelty

Many years later, Chas Slumber's advertisement still appears under "Children's Entertainers" in The Compleat Ankh-Morpork. How frightening is that show? --Old Dickens (talk) 04:36, 6 January 2017 (UTC)

Could be very frightening. Like clowns, can the name be passed on in your will or sold on after your demise? And Punch-and-Judy shows are one of those time-honoured forms of entertainment which today are still, word-for-word and action-for-action, pretty much exactly as they were several centuries ago. Punch is even dressed in recognisable motley. The horrible thought emerges that this is a small but recognisable part of the Fools' guild portfolio of entertainment interests and as such comes under the purview of doctor Whiteface. Somewhere in the Halls of Mirth a small dedicated department is training Punch-and-Judy operators in the time-honoured skills and ensuring they deviate from the script not in the tiniest iota... Help, I feel fanfic coming on.AgProv (talk) 15:39, 6 January 2017 (UTC)

I note that “a Punch and Judy show” is something that comes to mind for Polly Perkins in a brief mention in Monstrous Regiment. So the shows definitely continued, and spread as far as Borogravia - or, perhaps, it’s a horribly cruel tradition that originated there, rather than being invented by Slumber? As for Ankh-Morpork, perhaps the shows continued to be performed by the gnomes in their experimental theatre troupe, free of Mr Slumber’s constraints. Or they may have hired a new human to be “Chas Slumber” so they could capitalise on the existing name, in much the same way Maurice hires Kevin. -- Guybrush (talk) 00:09, 23 August 2023 (UTC)