Performers Jérémie Francoeur and Clara Prévost enter at the start of Macbeth Muet and help each other don smocks.

The promise, it seems, is that things are about to get messy — and they do, with crowd-pleasing results in this inventive comedic take on Macbeth.

Jon Lachlan Stewart's show is Shakespeare by way of Looney Tunes — a wordless retelling of Shakespeare's dark story of murder and ambition, conveyed primarily through object puppetry. The sturdy Macduff, for example, is represented by a hockey glove, King Duncan by a playing card attached to styrofoam containers, with the assorted puppets skillfully manipulated by Fancoeur and Prévost.

The mayhem is backed by an impeccably assembled soundtrack, which scores the action by spinning rapidly through snippets of everything from Mozart to Bjork.

It all gets quite silly — there will be blood, friends — but it's also surprisingly touching at points. Who knew violence against eggs and an oven mitt could be so moving?

Frenetic and fun and ingenious, Macbeth Muet is killer theatre.