review

Warhorse: in pictures

Posted by hil

warhorse

Warhorse, showing at the National Theatre in London, has some absolutely stunning life-size horse puppets, designed and made by Basil Jones and Adrian Kohler from the South African Handspring Puppet Company.

Made of cane and gauze, plywood and bicycle brake-cable, nylon cord and leather, they are moved from the inside by actors, who can clearly be seen through the horses’ skeletal bamboo frames; another human steers the head, so that the steeds nuzzle, twitch their ears, shiver with fear, rear in fright, roll their lustrous eyes; they also neigh and snicker. The actors are the inner lives of the beasts: when one horse dies, sinking to its knees and then lying, as a silvery grey skeleton, on its side, you see the puppeteers rolling out of the frame as if they were a band of souls leaving a body. After battle, the stage is covered in emptied carcasses, like dressmakers’ dummies. – Suzannah Clapp, review in The Guardian

The Guardian also has a gallery of images that tell the story, as well as providing the best photographs of the puppets that I have come across. Of course, much of the magic is in their movement: there is a glimpse of that in this ‘what the audience thinks’ video.

There are some other reviews at The Independent, Daily Telegraph, The Times, and the London Theatre Guide.

(via Puppetry News)

Previously:

Walking with Dinosaurs: The Live Experience: a review

Posted by hil

IMG_3357

I finally caught up with Walking with Dinosaurs: the Live Experience during its season in Adelaide. The dinosaurs are absolutely fabulous; huge realistic reptiles with fluid movement, thunderous roars, grunts and lowing, and where appropriate, menace. To achieve this live on such a grand scale is impressive, and represents a great pooling of skills in the Creature Design and Build Team: design, engineering, mechanics, skin and sculptural fabrication, technical management and direction. I loved the vegetation that grew up around the arena, and flowered brilliantly; the stage elements that sprouted trees or in turn became volcanoes; and the lighting.

IMG_3322

The show is a documentary in the round, or a live newsreel. A paleontologist provides commentary throughout the performance, taking the audience through the various ages of the dinosaurs, pointing out their features, and making the odd joke. Although I saw the need for this as a device to make the show cohesive, and as a way of giving an idea of the sheer size of the creatures, I found it annoying to be ‘educated’ constantly, especially when at times he had to almost shout to be heard over swelling music. Although the dinosaurs threaten each other and have great stand-offs, and at times are wonderfully fierce, the show lacks the emotional content that I think marks great theatre or puppetry; we are instead essentially watching a passing parade of specimens, and observing how they behave.

Perhaps, though, it’s just me, as I am dispassionate about dinosaurs, while the phenomenal popularity of the BBC’s Walking with Dinosaurs documentary series suggests most people are not. The producers picked up on that popularity as the impetus for the live show. They know where their audience is – families, especially those with kids aged about 4 through 12 – and everyone coming out of the stadium seemed happy. I imagine it will continue its success overseas, and I believe there is a second round of dinosaurs now going into production.

More links:
891 ABC Adelaide: Walking with Dinosaurs: Some details and pics about how they are operated :)
SMH: walk among the giants, but hold tight!: Short interview with the puppetry director, Mat McCoy. (cool to see your move to direction, Mat)
‘Making of’ pages from the program: 1, 2
Babushka’s WwD Flickr photoset: some backstage close-up photography
Hangingpixel’s WwD Flickr photoset
YouTube WwD videos
The Age video report: behind the scenes glimpses; Angela Dufty, one of the drivers, explains how they are controlled. (try IE if it won’t play on Firefox)

Previously:
Walking with Dinosaurs: the Live Experience: new slideshow
Workshop footage,
Walking with Dinosaurs: The Live Experience

Ten Days on Earth: a real treat

Posted by hil

Honeydog
(Honeydog awaiting his pink cranberry! waistcoat. Photo credit: Attit Patel, Toronto Life)

I caught Ronnie Burkett’s 10 Days on Earth up in Sydney last week, and it is a real treat. If you get a chance to see it, go!

The story is about Darrel, who is middle-aged and simple. His life revolves around his elderly mother, with whom he lives and on whom he is dependent, and various friends he regularly meets on his way to work as a shoe-shine boy. At the beginning of the play his mother dies, and we follow his gradual realization of what has happened, interspersed with flashbacks to other times in his life.

But there is also a play within a play, as, from time to time, Burkett reveals a separate smaller stage to tell the comic story of Honeydog and Little Burb, Darrel’s all-time favourite picture book. Honeydog’s search for an understanding of family and home gives Darrel his inner reality and context in life, including, at the end, an understanding of what has happened to his mother, and how life can continue. In other words, it’s beautifully scripted, as well as being wonderfully made and performed.

We stayed for Ronnie’s talk after the show, and it was a pleasure to hear him chat about the ideas behind the show, and many aspects of his work. He covers some of the same ground in Margaret Throsby’s interview with him on Thursday 22 Feb. I don’t know how long this interview will be available, so here is a back up. John Lambert has an excellent Ronnie Burkett page, which has reviews, technical details of the staging, a photo gallery, and a visit to the studio. I especially liked Liz Nicholl’s review, because it mentions Honeydog and his companions more than others. I also enjoyed Bryce Hallet’s account in the SMH.

Walking with Dinosaurs: The Live Experience

Posted by hil

Small_eye

The Sydney Morning Herald today has the first glimpse on video that I have seen of a mighty puppet production that is going on in Melbourne at the moment: Walking with Dinosaurs: The Live Experience. The creative team, with Sonny Tilders as Head of Creature Design, is making 12 life-size animatronic/puppet dinosaurs, including Tyrannosaurus-Rex, Brachiosaurus and the Flying Ornithoceirus ‘the largest creature to ever take wing… with a maximum wing-span of 12 metres (40 feet) and up to 3 metres tall
when standing on all fours’. The creatures will come to life at the world premiere on 10 Jan 2007 at the Acer Arena in Sydney, and will tour nationally before taking off around the world.

One of the producers, Malcolm C Cooke, has previously been involved with other puppetry productions including The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, and the second production of The Hobbit in 2000.

Judging by the video, the puppets are simply amazing, and I hope I get to see them. I do wonder though, if there will be more to the production than sheer spectacle. I’ve wondered this about dinosaurs and realism before! Sometimes I start to crave subtlety and symbol and story.

Dinosaur

Update
Here are some newspaper reports today. The reports are similar, but different photos.
The Age: ‘We touched a dinosaur! Doyouthinkhesaurus’?
Sydney Morning Herald: OK, which of you kids called me fossil features?
The Australian:Kids get chance to walk back in time – best description of how the puppets are made and move
Courier Mail: For a stomping good time
Daily Telegraph: Dinosaurs roar back to life in arena – 3 photos

Update (8 Aug 06):
WireImage has a two-page listing of thumbnail images from the promotion the other day.

Update (22 Mar 07):
Workshop footage,
Walking with Dinosaurs: the Live Experience: new slideshow
Walking with Dinosaurs – The Live Experience: a review, and more links

Spare Parts Puppet Theatre & Shaun Tan: The Arrival

Posted by hil

arrival

Following on from yesterday’s post about the puppet-based theatre adaptation of Shaun Tan’s picture book, The Red Tree, today I discovered that Spare Parts Puppet Theatre’s adaptation of Shaun’s new book, The Arrival, had just finished it’s season in Perth. The production, which The Australian gives a rave review, uses digital animation, puppetry and acting, and is visual theatre:

‘The absence of words not only makes the story perfect for puppetry but emphasizes the isolation that is experienced by many people arriving in a new place.’

Although The Arrival book doesn’t come out until October, there is an online preview, in which you can see some of the pages, and read Shaun’s detailed description. It looks wonderful – a 128 page book of illustrations without words, a
silent graphic novel, arranged and presented rather like a photo album, which can be interpreted rather like a silent film. ‘Through a series of connecting images, it tells the story of an anonymous migrant leaving some unfortunate
circumstances in his home country, crossing an ocean to a strange new city, and learning how to live here.’

The Lost Thing, another Tan book that was made into puppet theatre by Jigsaw Theatre Company here in Canberra a few years ago, and for which I made puppets, has been touring since, and is due to have a season in Melbourne this November at the Arts Centre.

I also came across some photos at Flickr of a Shaun Tan mural at the Subiaco Library in Perth.

Update:
Talking Squid’s review by Russell B. Farr

Links updated 2015

National Puppetry Summit: Strings

Posted by hil

StringsErito

I found the film Strings, which I saw at the Puppetry Summit, very curious. You can see a trailer here, a stills gallery here, and an article about the puppetry and the making of the movie here. I was intrigued by numerous aspects about the film and the puppetry, but I didn’t enjoy it as a whole, and it didn’t move me on an emotional level at all.

In the world conjured up in Strings, everyone has strings like a marionette, that reach up to heaven. Where there are relationships between people, like family, lovers, even slaves and slave owner, there is some magical connection via their strings in heaven. A person’s head string is their life line, and if it is severed they die. People are made of wood. Babies are carved out of wood and are inanimate until the time comes to be born. During the birth, the mother is in some kind of connection of concentration with the baby. Very fine threads appear from heaven, and a birth helper catches hold of them and places them in the prepared holes, where they magically connect. As the head string connects, the baby becomes alive, opening its eyes for the first time. An injury like a hand string being severed means that body part dies, but a replacement part can be got from someone else in an operation – at that person’s cost. If a person dies naturally, their strings come
tumbling down from heaven.

The puppets have strongly carved faces suggestive of their characters. Eyes open and close, but there is no other facial movement. You get used to the lips not moving very quickly. I liked the way age is suggested by the wood aging: some characters are very weathered, with deep cracks in the grain of their faces, and the oracles seem to be almost rotting away.

The images of multitudes of strings disappearing into the heavens are conceptually interesting, as is the way the people are kept prisoner by a grid in the prison roof that keeps an individual’s strings in check, and the kids play ‘tangle’. But then it didn’t make sense how people managed moving through gateways and doors!

Strings seemed to me to be essentially a film asking for peace: two warring cultures reunited after realizing they should get along and the young ones falling in love, and although but I didn’t find the story itself engaging, the symbolism was interesting. My strong impression was that a lot of the imagery derived from the Iraq war – toppling the statue of the tyrant, beheadings, torture, the quest for liberation, and a masked enemy. Later I found this was confirmed in interviews with the director, Anders Rønnow Klarlund, in a press kit. (Check the newspaper article from The Times in particular). Another noticeable thing was how water was always used in death scenes – rain, puddles, floating the bodies away on rafts, and the battle dead were in water or snow. At the end, when the princess dies, the little dinosaur bird that was her familiar, has the courage to fly for the first time, and it is without strings. It flies off her burial raft and is free.

(My attendance at the puppetry summit was supported by the ACT Government)

Links updated 2015

International Puppet Carnival reviews

Posted by hil

Coffee-cat, Kathleen Azali, has a cool run down on the Melbourne International Puppet Carnival, with photos, and links to a few reviews and video clips. In taking a look at her portfolio, I was interested to see Kathleen had done some making for eRTH. She made Eve, pictured here with barb barnett, in all-mother. And I love the zombie dragon made for the Magic Flute.

I meant to post something about all-mother. It was intense and challenging theatre, and the story was somewhat complex to unravel, especially since it was told backwards. It had some wonderful puppetry. In particular I remember the scene where Lilith is surrounded by small devils, creatures made from sticks and other found objects, all with their own idiosyncratic ways of moving; and the scene where one is drawn in to share her exquisite tenderness for her babies, only then to have to watch as she tears them apart, part of her punishment for saying no to Adam.

Updated links 2015

Pride & Prejudice 3 (2005) Review: The flat-chested adaptation

Posted by hil

I saw P&P3 last night. It was released the day before (after a few advance screenings last weekend), but at the 9.30pm Friday show there were not many more than a scattering of people in the theatre. I was surprised at that.

Talk about feeling the history when I went to see this. As the first scene rolls, it’s dawn and the birds are just starting to sing. My first thought was, ‘I wonder if Martti Alatalo (Birdcalls in P&P2 pdf) is watching this and whether he will rate it as ‘a movie without obvious bird flaws’?’. LOL.

It’s an enjoyable movie, but I’m quite critical of it.

Amy used to call Jane Austen The SquirmMeister, and my main feeling about this P&P is that it has all but taken out that essential JA squirm factor. It lacks the nuances that make the comedy, irony and tension that we love. There are examples, but there are not nearly enough ofthem. It seems to be another move away from humour and satire towards small-r romance, rather than accommodating both.

Part of the trouble is that time is so short. There is so much story to get through, that there is not enough time to develop the highs and lows and build tension in between. In that sense the movie is itself, ironically, rather like those quickly developed but shallower relationships that Austen pitches as an antithesis to the deep successful ones: the Charlotte/Collins match (or, more kindly, the Jane/Bingley match) as opposed to the Lizzy/Darcy one.

The Wickham plot is relegated to a minor sideline, so there is no real depth to that whole side of the ‘first impressions’ theme. Charlotte’s plight is well expressed, but her cunning is absent, and her tragedy is not even hinted at. She is quite gleeful at having her own house. It’s interesting to see Collins played in a completely different way, and it works on one level, but he is pathetic rather than funny most of the time. Likewise Lady Catherine is severe, Mrs Bennet is kinder and less stupid, and Caroline Bingley is snide, without much irony, fun or squirming being drawn from their characters.

I was surprised to find Mr. Bennet an exception. In fact, I think Donald Sutherland’s portrayal was the highlight of the film for me. He is not given as much wit and cynicism as he should have, which is a pity, but there are some delightful moments of dry humour and shared twinkles and understandings between him and Lizzy. He was played with great depth, and I loved his growly gravelly affection.

One major problem for me was that I didn’t feel I was given any reasons why Jane or Lizzy especially liked and wanted Bingley and Darcy, apart from gratitude on Lizzy’s part (I know gratitude is a major turning point in the book too, but it needs to be more than gratitude, doesn’t it?). Bingley did have tolerable teeth, but he blithered and had a completely distracting crest of red hair (a la Kyle Sanderland). Darcy looks mopey rather than haughty much of the time, though he becomes a bit more convincing and attractive towards the end of the movie. The conversations we see between Lizzy and Darcy are at times more true to the book than P&P2. For example during the dance at the Netherfield Ball, its Lizzy who is flustered and provokes Darcy, whereas in P&P2 it’s portrayed as a more equal sparring battle and stand-off. At other times its not so – the first proposal turns into a flaming row. I think the film asks me to just accept that these couples fall in love because its inexplicable why certain people fall in love, rather than showing me why they like each other so much or find each other attractive. Davies was impeccible in sharing the attraction with the audience, and pacing the dramatic tension. This one falls somewhat flat in comparison on both scores.

KK’s Lizzy is good, though I found her frequent and instant giggle-with-nose-wrinkled annoying. Jane is wonderful. I liked the girls being so young, but didn’t like the Gardiners and others being so old. Liked the rural setting and all the animals. Didn’t find it Bronte-ish. Thought the scene where Lizzy and Darcy talk outside at Pemberley was well done. Thought the scene previous to that, her peeping in on Georgiana and Darcy was wrong, and the one before, with the white sculptures, was over-the-top and a silly.

Disliked Lady Catherine arriving at night and all the others listening at the door. Disliked where Lizzy gets Jane’s letter and tells Darcy about Lydia’s fall in the Gardiner’s presence – the tension was completely thrown away, and we don’t really feel what tremendous loss she feels at that point. Ditto when Darcy returns to Netherfield and Lizzy doesn’t know how he feels. Thought the second proposal was schmaltz visually. Georgiana was young, which I liked, but not nearly demure enough. Wickham looked good, but for what use when his whole subplot was nixed? The music in the first scene fades into Mary playing the piano, which was a bit odd. And at the first assembly ball its just a group playing, but an orchestral recording.

There are few full bosoms. I’m sorry to disappoint, but like the movie, there it is.

Update:

I’ve decided its more Hardy (a la the movie ‘Far from the Madding Crowd’) than Bronte. The director sites it as an influence.

The US gets a ‘kissy-face ending’.

Most enteraining reviews:
Laura Carroll at The Valve: Pirates of Pemberlay (via Loobylu)
Anthony Lane at the New Yorker

Gondwana

Posted by hil

Due to popular demand the National Museum of Australia has scheduled some extra performances of Gondwana by the Sydney company erth Visual and Physical Inc. You’ll have to be quick to book, as the last performances are this coming weekend.

Gondwana

The puppets are fantastic, as you might expect from erth, and with Bryony Anderson on the making team (I don’t know who else was on the team) . Some are wonderfully satisfyingly HUGE. Others have delightful characteristics, such as the Leptictidium’s twitchy nose. With one exception – the crocodile-y animal – the creatures moved beautifully. I loved the fine movements of the Meganeura, a gigantic primative dragonfly, and the Ammonites. One of the smaller dinosaurs shared a similar and effective design to some of the puppets in ‘The Lion King’, such as the warthog: the puppeteer visible in the middle, with the neck and head built out the front, and tail out the back. The baby Dryosaurs were just plain cute. And the inflatable lanscape and original soundscape were cool, too.

At the performance I saw the accoustics were dreadful. It was hard to hear any of the narration.

Its an interesting task to seek to satisfy both traditional theatre audiences as well as museum audiences. For the theatre goer, there was drama in seeing the creatures brought to life so well, but little story development aside from evolution. For museum audiences, which I assume are those whose interests are mainly historical and scientific – and there has been great attention paid to scientific accuracy in developing the show – there might be some unease about the artistic licence that allows the Liptictidium, a relative late-comer and ‘visitor from the Northern Hemisphere’, to appear through each era as a link throughout the performance.

The program leaflet gave lots of scientific detail. It would have been good if it had also credited the directors, performers, makers and production team, and given us some detail about the puppets.

Gondwana is the first of three shows which will be developed over the next three years. The second will cover time after the dinosaurs, and the third the present time and future of Australia. I’m looking forward to the next installment.

Update: Here are a few links:
Dinosaurs given new life
Interview with Phil Downing, Musical Director of Erth

Update 2015: broken links. Some photos of the puppets are at Erth > gallery > museums > scroll down. They are inaccessible for linking.