Reviews by Rochelle Arnold, Jeff Ashcraft, Patricia Baugh-Riechers, Audra Beals, Pamela Briggs, Dee Canfield, Madeline Dudziak, Kim Eastland, Emily Heninger, Heather Herkelman, Kitty (née Israel) Hooker, Mischa Hooker, Paula Jolly, Victoria Navarro, Roger Pavey Jr., Alexander Richardson, Mark Ruebling, Mike Schulz, Joy Thompson, Oz Torres, Brent Tubbs, Jill Pearson Walsh, and Thom White.

Background characters essayed by day players. Casts of thousands. Movies are crawlin’ with ’em. Nobody much cared about the usually unnamed souls who were rarely part of the plot, and they still don’t. But Puffs, a boy-wizard spoof subtitled Seven Increasingly Eventful Years at a Certain School of Magic & Magic, shines a spotlight on them (without casting “lumos,” because that’s a proprietary spell).

Director Pam Cantrell, her cast, and her crew served this entertaining concoction (yes, there are funny bits) with seven of Poe’s stories as ingredients.

Kitty: Before the show started, Tommy Ranieri, the Timber Lake Playhouse's artistic director, asked the audience for a show of hands: Who had seen Hands on a Hardbody on stage before?

Mischa: And no one had. He was clearly making the point that this show is not so well known to the general public. And really, the premise seems a little dubious for a stage musical.