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Stephen
Mottram
Animata:
The Seed Carriers
The Seas of Organillo
In Suspension
BAC / London
International Mime Festival
January 2006
Reviewed
by Matthew Isaac Cohen
A retrospective of three of Stephen Mottram’s works
for puppets and automata, In Suspension (1988), The Seed Carriers
(1995) and The Seas of Organillo (2004) was presented as part
of the 2006 London International Mime Festival. Mottram has
developed a distinctive style of work as a solo artist maximizing
the use of his hand-crafted puppets and automata and remarkable
skills as a string puppeteer.
The Seed Carriers, perhaps Mottram’s best-known and
most-travelled work, is an allegory of exploitation and survival
told with some forty beautifully designed string puppets,
automata and other figures. The wordless play actualizes a
ruthless ecosystem on a circular platform with sliding curtains
and compartments. The eponymous seed carriers are small wooden
figures who are captured and killed by the puppeteer and then
harvested by the puppeteer’s co-agent, a mysterious
old man (a tabletop puppet), an alchemist and fisherman with
a head like a medieval physician’s mask. Redemption
is achieved at the end: the seed carriers evolve, evading
bear traps and nets and morphing into man-animal hybrids.
The performance is a combination of stunning imagery and faultless
manipulation. Much is made of the play of scale – the
hulking puppeteer and the delicate seed carriers, the fragile
and innocent seed carriers, and the indifferent mysterious
old man. Some sequences are haunting. A cabinet opens up into
a triptych, becoming the laboratory of the old man, who rummages
through a pile of seed carrier corpses, discarding body parts
in a pile, and opening up torsos to get at the precious seeds
inside – represented as metallic balls, feathers, sand.
These are measured on a scale and stored in vials. When a
bit of inferior seed (represented as crumpled paper) is found
not to measure up, it is discarded along with the body parts
– and all subsequently end up churning in a black urn.
Another moving scene shows baby seed carriers being extracted
from pods, their cries of birth and their incubation inside
of hanging nets.
The Seas of Organillo is a window upon a completely different
world – a wordless undersea fantasia of creatures of
the sea, carnivorous spheres, sea urchins, humanoid man-fish
and shoals of fish. The puppeteer stands in a tower in the
centre of a circular platform that covers most of his body
and manipulates string puppets and automata in the ark before
him. While the puppeteer plays an active role in The Seed
Carriers, the highly focused stage lighting means that we
see little of the puppeteer in this second piece. There is
little in the way of story or progression, though there are
many delightful images – a bubble escaping from a fish’s
mouth, a fish-eating crab, the delicate kicking of humanoid
feet. The audience sighed in delight when thirteen fish on
fish paused in alertness and changed directions in unison
– such was the precision of the animation and the illusion
of life. There is even an interlude of magic – with
one ball becoming two, a levitating ball and so on. The performance,
though technically superb, is very slow and unmoving. The
real star of the show is perhaps the mechanical organ that
Mottram built for the show’s pre-recorded soundtrack.
As the puppeteer/maker explained in a brief after-show demonstration,
all of the music and effects (creaking, squealing and other
mechanical sounds) are generated from this reconstruction
of a 19th century instrument. Mottram was charming in this
presentation, joking about his collaboration with composer
Sebastian Castagna, explaining which parts were purchased
from B&Q (emphasising he had no financial arrangement
with the company) and bringing some much-needed human interaction
into the proceedings.
In Suspension is a wordless cabaret show in six scenes enacted
on a semi-circular platform backed by a curtained puppet booth.
The first scene, a number entitled Animata dating to 1986,
is a circus of monochromatic, barrel-bellied string puppets
– a white acrobat, a blue strongman, an orange unicycle
rider, a yellow trapeze artist, a red tightrope walker. All
not only demonstrate the dexterity of the maker and animator,
but also subtly allude to human foibles and eccentricities
portrayed allegorically through superhuman feats. The masochism
of the acrobat is apparent from the start in the way he pulls
himself across the ground and contorts himself to stand on
his hands. The blue strongman’s act smacks of exhibitionism,
and the pride he takes as he casts down his dumbbells on the
ground garnered laughter from the audience. The unicycle rider
is manic, all starts and stops, hands quavering and moving
to a syncopated beat. And so on. At the end of each artist’s
bit, the puppet is whisked off and draped at the back of the
stage, forming a mute audience of fellow-artists. And when
the scene is over, all five puppets are quickly covered with
a black sheet—a reminder of the circus’ perpetual
play with death.
The second scene begins with the death of a large, two-legged
bird. Tenderly, the puppeteer rubs the bird’s belly,
unpeels a layer of skin and opens up its belly so that a baby
bird can emerge from the corpse of its mother. This bird takes
its first awkward steps and then meets another bird of its
own size. The two birds play together, mirroring each other’s
movements, dancing joyfully. The second bird slips over the
edge, and the newborn bird is left by itself, plaintively
looking over the edge of the platform for his friend. He too
disappears over the edge and the mother’s corpse flies
away.
The third scene is a dream. A white-skinned, corpulent man,
with a perpetual frown sits on a toilet in the shape of an
elephant’s foot. The sound of African drums and singing
can be heard. A fly, naked to the eye, buzzes around the man
and he tries to catch it. The man falls asleep on the toilet
and starts to snore. (A beautiful effect, evidently accomplished
by an internal motor in the bunraku-style puppet.) The fly
of the man’s dream becomes visible: a giant six-limbed
dancing grotesque, accompanied by a Latin pulse and with a
gyrating lower extremity (a sequined dress). The limbs fly
away from the body, the fly circles through the air, the legs
and body move in precision to the music, until finally the
white man wakes up, the African drumming resumes, and, with
a rare smile of acknowledgement from the puppeteer and a bow
from the puppet, the number concludes.
The fourth scene is the play of a body-less string puppet
which shuffles its feet, flies to pieces, distends itself,
glows in the dark. The fifth and sixth scenes are magic shows.
In the fifth scene, a bunraku-style puppet dressed in a cowl
and with a pentagram inscribed on his gown, does a cup and
ball trick, levitates a ball, swallows a sword, pulls handkerchiefs
and internal organs from its mouth and decapitates himself.
In the evening’s finale, the back curtain is lifted
away revealing a puppet booth. A glove puppet magician cranks
up a phonograph, plays around with a pair of dancing feet,
pulls a bunny and handkerchiefs out a hat, dodges a bouncing
ball. The action is slapstick and the magician’s failures
to control the recalcitrant rabbit, successfully dodge the
ball and keep the phonograph running are all strangely endearing.
While the glove puppet is the physically furthest and among
the smallest puppets of the show, the magician is also among
the most engaging characters, and it is hard not to feel sad
when the puppeteer’s black-gloved hands swoops him up
and carries him away.
Mottram has developed in this body of work a distinctive style
of puppetry. The figures are all well crafted, finely detailed
and best viewed in close proximity. Mottram’s manipulation
and sense of timing are impeccable, and the coordination with
music and subtle use of light is extraordinary. Many of the
devices used in the shows are standard tricks of the marionette
trade – In Suspension in particular is a veritable catalogue
of string puppet tricks developed over centuries by masters
of the trade. But Mottram’s studied use of sound and
light, scenic design, rhythm, and staging elevates even the
most mundane of tricks to the level of art.
Two points merit further commentary. Though the puppeteer
is nearly always visible on stage, he does not emote with
the puppets nor does he even take on a convincing attitude
of concentration. His face displays little feeling, though
occasionally it suggests ironic detachment. This distances
us from his fragmentary narratives, making it harder to follow
through-lines. Instead, we become focused on technique. Recorded
music confirms the impression that the puppeteer is himself
a puppet or automaton, moving according to the designs of
a soundtrack pre-recorded a decade or more in the past. The
performances thus feel slightly musty, not quite of the moment.
The second point is the matter of representation. The London
International Mime Festival and Battersea Arts Centre marketed
all three shows as ‘not suitable for children,’
while in this critic’s estimation they are very appropriate
for kids over 5. Mottram’s productions are not children’s
shows. But they are also not ‘adult shows,’ in
the sense that there is nothing overtly sexual, vulgar or
gratuitously violent in them. All this points to an endemic
problem in British puppetry, the desire on the part of promoters
and some artists to segment the sector into ‘children’s
entertainment’ and ‘adult art’. Such a division
is insidious and can only lead to bad shows for children and
even worse shows for adults. Mottram’s puppet art deserves
to be celebrated for what it is – highly evocative bridges
to other worlds that can be traversed by young and old alike.
Andrew
Dawson
Absence and Presence
ICA / London International Mime Festival
January 2006
Reviewed by Beccy
Smith
Absence
and Presence is a physical meditation on memory; the very
specific blend of affection, sadness, guilt, of images and
emotion, connecting Andrew Dawson to his father who, after
his death twenty years ago, was left undiscovered at his home
for over a week. Dawson’s effortless economy of movement
packs images onto the starkly white and empty stage. His mime
dovetails breathtakingly from the mundane detail of his father’s
daily subsistence to epic imaginary adventures and resonating
images of father and son.
The magic of this performance is that it achieves that rare
triptych, its movements and images communicating not only
on a warmly intelligent level, but also one that is unashamedly
emotional and powerfully theatrical. Joey Talbot’s vividly
poignant orchestral score exponentially heightens the impact
of the mime sequences’ power and beauty, perfectly complementing
the contained control of Dawson’s physicality. Recurrent
images of a moth furiously exploring the space and futilely
returning to ever-higher bare bulbs evokes both the empty
house, the contrast between his departed life and this minuscule
life-force continuing and, like later diving and underwater
sequences, translate as a recognisable metaphor of living
with depression. Intercutting these are scenes of gut-wrenching
intensity, Dawson imagining his father’s final throes
and recreating the sense of abandonment experienced through
the double loss of his father through first depression then
death.
Theatrically, absence is incarnated from the smallest sounds
of a fridge’s hum, to the pale canvas of a stage bare
except for two chairs, three bulbs, a TV set and a wire mesh
figure. Using the television to bring in footage of Dawson’s
father (played by Dawson himself), who is charmingly, fleetingly
present but forever sliding out of view – and in one
bravura sequence of an inert body which, as we scroll across
it, is seemingly conjured in empty space, aptly captures the
remorselessness of the subject both within (at points in centre
stage) of the piece and crucially, irreversibly removed from
it.
Inclusion of this piece in Animations was inspired by a single
sequence when (without directly touching it) Dawson uses hand-held
light to vividly animate the sitting mesh figure of his father’s
memory. This changing shadow, huge on the back wall screen,
suggests both life and movement and sale of emotion and relationship.
Its silent scene is one of the most evocative pieces of shadow
puppetry I have witnessed. Later, as Dawson transforms the
figure from babe-in-arms to prone older man, carrying him
on his shoulders, and then as a dead body in his arms, it
drives home that the re-animation of this life-sized figure,
and its material of malleable, fleshy, translucent, invisible
mesh, enacts the heart of the piece. Dawson has created a
world where experiences of absence are beautifully and thoughtfully
evoked for a theatre audience. And what better than puppetry
itself to capture the simultaneous experience of absence and
presence?
Compagnie
Mossoux-Bonté
Out
of the Heart of Darkness
Compagnie Mossoux-Bonté
Twin Houses
Purcell Room, SBC
London International Mime Festival
January 2006
Reviewed by Dorothy Max Prior
 Twin
Houses is a wordless solo performance which combines dance-theatre
with puppetry/object animation. Specifically, the female performer
works with five mannequins to create a series of short scenes
– movement sequences and tableaux that evoke the Gothic
and the surreal; a catalogue of moving pictures that reference
the imagery of dreams and nightmares. Described in the publicity
as a ‘spine tingling study of physical and spiritual
possession’ that is ‘eerie, sinister and erotic’,
I was disappointed to find Twin Houses none of those things.
It was originally made ten years previously and cited as a
landmark of visual theatre, so maybe the world has moved on
and the piece no longer has the power it held originally?
Lest I have given a different impression, it must be said
that it is a very competent piece of work – a visually
attractive piece, well-executed; but I found it neither haunting
nor particularly thought-provoking. And although the manipulation
is very skilled, I rarely suspend disbelief for long enough
to believe in the mannequins as anything other than an extension
of the dancer.
It
starts in a low-key tone that continues throughout most of
the piece. I like the low-level yellow-tinged lighting that
evokes Fuseli’s nightmarish Gothic paintings; I appreciate
the insistent drone of the soundscape that floods the space
with an ominous atmosphere; I admire the fluidity of the movement
and the way the mannequins are worked in symbiotic harmony
with the performer. But having established the ground-rules
of the piece, it doesn’t seem to progress; as one section
morphs into the next, there is little that shifts, few surprises
or moments of revelation. An exception is a light-hearted
partner-dance section that lifts the piece by injecting a
shift of tone.
A pleasant enough experience, but leaving the theatre there
is hardly anything that remains to stay with me.
Royal
Shakespeare Company
A Midsummer Night’s Dream
Novello
Theatre, London
February 2006
Reviewed by Penny Francis
The romance, the featherlight wit, the knockabout comedy,
the faerie and folk elements, all of these combine to make
this one of the most popular of The Bard’s comedies.
The production by the RSC is reviewed here because there are
puppets in it. We saw a toddler and some tiny fairies made
by Lyndie Wright in the workshop of the Little Angel, the
toddler being the little changeling Indian boy who causes
the marital spat between Titania and Oberon, and the fairies
being – well, the fairies, carried as fluttering icons
by human actors dressed as fairies, presumably their doubles.
The puppet fairies made only minimal impact: given their size
and the cluttered background for their fluttering, they were
not very visible. Actually, they were manufactured dolls with
wings attached. Steve Tiplady and Rachel Leonard had coached
the actors in their manipulation, but some need reminding
of how to make their fairy flutter better. Shadows haunted
the otherwise modernist backdrop of the forest scenes rather
beautifully: Steve Tiplady and his Indefinite Articles company
were at least partly responsible: he knows a thing or two
about shadow play.
The Indian boy baby looked endearing and turned his head very
prettily. Not much more was demanded of it or the other figures,
though there was a shocking moment at the beginning when Puck
dashed a fairy to the ground, ripped off her wings and stamped
on her. To a puppet fanatic it was sheer horror. Puck (or
Robin Goodfellow) was the surprise and star of the show. The
actor’s name is Jonathan Slinger and he looks like a
plumper version of Phelim McDermott (from Improbable) –
and behaved like him too. He was very, very funny, in an interpretation
of the role I’ve never witnessed before. Shambling,
laid back, insolent, but as mischievous as Puck should be,
he sported a bright red hairdo with spikes, and wore baggy
t-shirt and trews.
The rude mechanicals were funny too, and Bottom, played by
the mightily tall Malcolm Storry, made me laugh more than
any other Bottom I can recall. The lovers, on the other hand,
did a lot of shouting and cavorting to little effect, and
I cared nothing for them. Any hope of their living happily
ever after seemed unrealistic. A good laugh at the expense
of the short one, Hermia, came when her friend Helena called
her a puppet.
Otherwise the ‘real’ puppets brought overtones
of fantasy and otherworldliness to the production, but perhaps
they could have been exploited to greater effect. The fleshly
fairies supporting them seemed very solid and the forest setting
very jagged by contrast. They were, I’m afraid, overwhelmed.
But how good that yet another fine company has found in puppetry
a treasure to enrich their work still further!
Sketty
Productions
Imogen
Oval House, London
February 2006
Reviewed by Chris Abbott
Well received at the Edinburgh Festival, Imogen recently returned
to London before setting out on a national tour. Against a
detailed naturalistic set, a cast of six tell a story of loss
and death. We see the central character, Leonardo, trying
to cope with the loss of first his daughter and then his partner.
The daughter, Imogen, is portrayed as a puppet (wearing a
rabbit hood in the early scenes), sensitively operated by
Lowri James with Alex Clarke.
Although this character is always believable, it did take
a while to accept the remote (and rather too cute) child voice-over
as being her, and it was surprising that her lines were not
spoken by the puppeteer. In a large cast for a small venue,
Dani Machancoses’ central mesmerising performance was
well matched with Miranda Keeling as his partner and Ollie
Simpson in a supporting role. The other puppet character,
the Crow, was beautifully handled by Alex Clarke, who managed
to convey the weight of the bird as it landed, and its preening
movements, so that it was totally real for the audience.
Writer/director Toby Clarke has created a thoughtful and effective
piece and he is probably wise to keep it to around an hour
in length. The intensity of the central action would be difficult
to maintain – or for an audience to accept – for
a longer period. Darryl Worbey’s puppets were always
effective and often added weight to the narrative in a way
which would have been impossible for human actors. The puppets
were well integrated into the action and puppetry illuminated
the human actors when Leonardo began to move Amie as if she
too was a puppet, and when he was later moved by others. The
malevolent crow – perhaps standing for the returning
cancer, or for death? – was the most striking part of
the evening, although the central actor’s athletic and
intense performance will also remain in the memory.
Oily
Cart
If All The World Were Paper
Lyric,
Hammersmith
February 2006
Reviewed by Penny Francis
 You
could call this show ‘material theatre’ since
it was all about paper and nearly everything was made of paper.
The scenography by Amanda Webb was pleasing, starting out
in a black and white setting before a paper proscenium with
a paper curtain, and three actors in black and white with
paper hats, and ending in a highly coloured rainbow land where
even the trees and their fruit and flowers were paper.
The show was billed for 2-5 year-olds and was written by someone
who must be the most prolific and experienced writer in this
field – Tim Webb. He directed, too. There was a story
which didn’t matter too much but which worked very well:
a string of cut-out paper girls, one of whom runs away and
finds many adventures and finally returns to find her formerly
attached sisters restless to be free, like her, worked very
well. On the way we met some imaginative situations and characters,
such as a giant paper bird, a paper boat, amusing activity
around a paper house, and lots and lots of paper bags which
made that wonderful popping sound when collecting strange
items. I remember Eric Morecambe of Morecambe and Wise doing
it and I still don’t know the secret. It’s magic
as far as I’m concerned, so please don’t tell
me. Lots of jolly music and songs accompanied the journey,
some recorded and operated from a laptop onstage, some live.
Criticisms or could-do-better section: as the show progressed
I became increasingly uncomfortable at the full-on volume
of the playing, especially of the two women who, otherwise
charming, easily went into screech mode. Moments of softer,
lower tones and the occasional under-playing would improve
things. The action also became wearyingly frenetic: even the
movement in the underwater sequence suggested anything but
the world of the deep where it’s difficult to do anything
quickly.
The production was, however, characterised by originality,
invention and a sense of fun which kept the young audience
and their mothers attentive. Everyone left smiling.
Little
Angel
Sleeping Beauty In The Wood
Little Angel Theatre
Islington, London
February 2006
Reviewed by Sarah McAlister
The Little Angel Theatre had a full house of assorted ages
to see their new production Sleeping Beauty in the Wood. Based
on the familiar fairytales (by Grimm and Perrault), it includes
all the elements of the originals - a King and Queen, Princess
Rose, six good fairies and one wicked fairy, and a handsome
prince who comes to the rescue.
Directed and designed by Joy Haynes (from Banyan Theatre,
who also directed previous production The Frog Prince), this
inventive show involves two delightful performers, Rachel
Leonard and Andrew Nixon (who also composed and performs
the music), expressive puppets and three ingenious wooden
automata (all made by the creative Jan Zalud), a great use
of shadow scenes, and generally excellent lighting (by Adam
Crosthwaite).
There’s an engaging start as the performers come in
from the back with some curious props (including a large teapot
and potty) and start the storytelling with some zany shadow
scenes showing the queen, who wants very much to have a baby.
The much-desired small baby finally arrives, rather curiously,
by being tossed to the front of the audience. (‘Why
is it a rabbit?’ asked one child near me, but we soon
realised it wasn’t). The princess was named Rose by
her delighted parents, who invited six fairies to her christening
– a beautiful scene with the feather-fairies giving
their gifts in a pink light. The audience was gripped when
the scene suddenly went dark: with loud knocks, the horrible
shadow of the long-nosed uninvited fairy appeared. Of course,
she brought her shocking prediction that Rose would prick
her finger on a spindle on her fifteenth birthday and die.
The scene where the king ordered that all spindles should
be burned was brilliantly effected with flashing red light.
Dark shadows were equally effective in showing the scary thorn
hedge which grew to surround the enchanted palace. An unusual
character, which captivated the whole audience at this point,
was a small puppet skeleton whose limbs and neck extended
as it danced, producing spontaneous laughter and applause.
The Little Angel has always been a magical place, and this
latest production provides an imaginative and colourful experience
in storytelling.
 Jose
Navarro
Animalia
White Bear Pub Theatre, Kennington
March 2006
Reviewed by Chris Abbott
A rainy Monday night in south London is not an enticing prospect,
and arrival at a deserted pub with two customers in the gloomy
interior didn’t increase the sense of expectation. I
was concerned that I was in the wrong place as there was no
poster anywhere to say that a performance was planned, although
plenty of evidence that the rival attraction in the bar would
be Wigan v. Manchester United on the big screen. However,
sure enough, at just before 7pm, the doors to the theatre
box office opened and I collected my ticket. I queried the
starting time and was told it would be not 7pm but 7.15ish…
At 7.30 we were at last called in to the theatre – myself,
one other audience member and a group of people who seemed
to be friends of the performer.
Jose Navarro’s performance was of a quality that deserved
a far more professional setting. A physically adept and technically
accomplished puppeteer and mime, his set of divertissements
presented a series of creatures formed mostly from his own
hands, arms and feet. A lively and appropriate soundtrack
was used together with reasonably effective lighting, although
it was unfortunate that the performer was sometimes in the
shadow rather than the lit area. It was also very annoying
that one of the group of friends took photographs throughout
the performance: the camera was silent but the green laser
beam from the camera auto-focus completely wrecked the effect
of the lighting on the characters.
There were many effective moments in the show although there
was also a degree of repetition at times. The silent arguing
faces, the shoe as a sea-horse, the foot fish and the dog
were all memorable, and the character performing the kiss
of life aroused the first noticeable reaction from a rather
unresponsive audience.
What the show needed – apart from a more professional
attitude on the part of the venue – was a director and
some sense of narrative or overall coherence. I thought at
first this was a piece in development but I notice from Jose
Navarro’s website that it has been performed since 2001.
Too often the series of vignettes presented something rather
too much like an artistic version of a puppet cabaret –
a series of striking turns but no overall build-up. Jose Navarro
is a talented performer with commitment and concentration,
and it is to be hoped that he will find collaborators who
will help him to harness his talents to create a more satisfying
performance. I look forward to seeing future performances
by him – but I don’t plan on returning to the
White Bear Pub Theatre in a hurry.
Wax
Baby Productions
iDollEyes
The Rosemary Branch Theatre, London
March 2006
The umbrella title, iDollEyes, takes as its inspiration the
vision of the puppet, and this seemed to lie at the heart
of the diverse array of shorts presented by Wax Baby productions,
out of the London School of Puppetry. The puppet’s world
has its own rules and its own slant on the world, a surreal
perspective. The pieces in this cabaret-style selection captured
this sense theatrically, immersing us in a bizarre universe
of grotesqueness and cuteness, weirdly re-imagined classics
and fantastical one-shots. Self-styled as ‘the new theatre
of animation’, the aesthetic certainly drew much from
an animated style and had its cartoonish elements but it was
also underpinned with a craftsman’s eye –beautifully
made figures and imaginative material stagings were recurrent.
The evening’s performances varied in quality but highlights
included the elegantly thought-through simplicity of Tratincica
Slavicek’s Birdybrella, where a lonely, gawky bird finds
its wings and a family; and inventive and energetic shadow
puppetry by Urko Redondo Pescador whose romping reinvention
of Shakespeare in Bottomed Out had great comic characterisation
and energy; Yuki Muramatsu’s precise focus and dextrous
technique were especially notable, creating fantasy worlds
of flying rabbits, fruit-based melodramatic street theatre
(Tutti Fruity AKA Romeo and Juliet!) and warm subaquatic sagas
all demonstrating the skills of a refined performer.
Overall though, such skills could be patchily in evidence
and the evening for me suffered from a lack of production
value, occasionally sloppy staging and moments where the performances
simply weren’t up to scratch. Its strengths lay in showcasing
the work of a range of exciting emergent artists; work which
was inventive and effortlessly crossed boundaries of live
art, street art, installation and theatre. When it worked,
iDollEyes succeeded in showcasing the craft of puppetry and
an intriguingly inventive aesthetic. By investing a similar
level of commitment to direction and production, perhaps this
new ‘theatre of animation’ really could be nurturing
a revolution.
Basement
Theatre of Tbilisi
Faust
Athis Mons, Paris
November 2005
Reviewed by Julia McLean
This version of the classic puppet drama Faust (by the renowned
Basement Theatre company from Tbilisi in Georgia) was played
by a16-strong ensemble using table-top rod puppetry. Aquiline
heads and delicately carved hands of lime wood, characteristic
of Russia and east Europe, season the performance –
each character controlled by a team of up to three puppeteers.
Three doctors sedate an asylum inmate who imagines himself
to be Faust. The veteran patient falls into a twilight slumber
where he relives Goethe’s story of the anti-hero’s
pact with the devil – to sign away his soul in exchange
for eternal life. The ‘physicians’ retire to their
table and glasses of water to voice text for the action taking
place on a long blacked trestle centre stage, while above
and beyond is a spacious black void (which is used to good
effect at the witches Sabbath scene). The open format does
not attempt to conceal puppeteers’ heads or hands, or
the demonstrative trio of actors now stage right on the apron.
Goethe’s tale of the permanent fall from grace focuses
on Amore and the price of temptation: young Faust’s
seduction of Gretchen, aided and abetted by Mephistopheles;
her ruin and death, his murder of Valentine in a duel who
dies trying to avenge his sister. However, Faust’s subsequent
repentance cannot halt her fate or the gleeful triumph of
the dancing devils. Back in the infirmary, the patient is
condemned to forever dream the replay of Faust’s never-to-be-resolved
dilemma.
The exploration of these ‘dark materials’ no doubt
has resonance for a company which has physically dug out an
arena for puppet theatre from a basement in Tbilisi, against
many odds.
Faust is defined by ingenious ensemble work from a troupe
whose size would surely be unsustainable in Britain –
a remarkable and unique production.
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