penny dreadful

It is the rare as-told-to book, or one created in collaboration with an author-for-hire, that is well-written, but “A Piece of Light” is filled with a superfluity of penny-dreadful prose.

Which can make the penny-dreadful plot even more giggle-icious.

“Tics” isn’t as satisfying as the evening’s penny-dreadful playlets, “The Lighthouse Keepers” and “The Final Kiss,” which are fun because they are so single-mindedly sensationalistic.

Instead, she praised it backhandedly as “a shallow masterpiece” that is “overwrought” with “obvious penny-dreadful popular theatrics.”

Violent, sex-soaked dime novels and penny-dreadful magazines were immensely popular, and upstanding publications such as Harper's and the Atlantic Monthly took delight in denouncing them.