Ligotti's horror is the horror of dreams and surreal. He describes an universe that is dark and mindless and in which humanity is only a trope of puppets on their way to corruption or destruction. The short stories are focused on describing the surreal world in which the characters live and therefore the actual plots of the stories are not important.

Perhaps reading one story per night would be better approach to Teatro Grottesco. Reading the book through in few days seemed to lessen the impact of separate stories, as they were arranged in a way that stories similar in theme followed each other. This way separate stories did not stand out, as they each described the same nightmares.