Despite its title, Ruddigore is neither gory nor scary. This topsy-turvy take on stock melodrama characters includes a group of professional bridesmaids, a village maiden who is wedded to her book of etiquette (with hilarious results), a timid suitor in disguise, a charming but backstabbing heroic sailor, a hysterical mad maiden, and a picture gallery of ghostly ancestors who step out of their frames in a most dramatic fashion. When the disguised suitor is revealed by his brother to be a Bad Baronet with the family curse of being required to commit a crime each day, roles get reversed and the logical comment of the mad girl puts the proceedings in proper comic relief with her proclamation: “They sing choruses in public. That’s mad enough I think.”