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“If you look back through any new movement in theater, you can always see the beginnings of it in the mime festival,” said Mr. McDermot whose first company appeared there in 1989 with “The Vinegar Works,” a precursor to Improbable’s Off Broadway hit “Shockheaded Peter.”

A children’s show in which thumb suckers have their thumbs hacked off, and picky eaters starve, “Shockheaded Peter” was enacted with ghastly gleefulness.

This nursery rhyme approach to the gruesome and grotesque was seemingly perfected by the Tiger Lillies’ “Shockheaded Peter,” which, like “Nevermore,” was first seen in New York at the New Victory Theater.

And I know it's a morality tale like Shockheaded Peter, but those children were bullies and pyromaniacs, not shy fatties.

But there are shows which I'd quite happily return to again and again, and I've certainly come out of a theatre on press night and immediately rushed to book again: Kneehigh's Tristan and Yseult, Punchdrunk's Masque of the Red Death, Complicite's Mnemonic and Improbable's Shockheaded Peter are just a few of the shows I couldn't stay away from.