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Canberra Today 24°/27° | Tuesday, March 19, 2024 | Digital Edition | Crossword & Sudoku

Review / ‘Special’ puppet show touches the heart

EVERY so often in the theatre, you see something so special, in a quiet way, that you want to shout about it.

Albert with his harbingers
Albert with his harbingers

“The Harbinger” is one such special show and it’s worth getting around to the Street by  Saturday to catch this exceptional mixture of puppetry and live acting from Brisbane’s wonderfully-named Dead Puppet Society.

While there is magic in this play, it is fully visible to the audience, performed by actor/puppeteers Kathleen Iron, Barbara Lowing, Emily Burton, Anna Straker and Giema Contini, who bring to life an elusive set of stories. I say elusive, because the teller of the tales, the dying writer Albert, is reluctant to reveal the strange tale of his own past and the  beautiful girl Adelaide until pressed to buy a young orphan swept in the from the outside storm.

Notionally we find ourselves inside a crumbling bookshop, full of the words that Albert says are ‘harbingers’ of our dreams. Outside is the real world full of terror, probably the result of an apocalyptic war that has seen all the trees chopped down, survived by a rare collection of apple seeds kept in a jar by the old man, ready to be sent out into the world.

The dreams and the seeds serve the same purpose, to reveal that even in the wizened heart of an old man and the desiccated heart of a young girl, love can exist.

The dominant puppet in this show is the gigantic (almost as high as the proscenium) Albert, often wheeled around and manipulated by three actors. This is no ordinary puppet, with a flexible material for the face that allows a degree of manipulation in expression and emotion.

As well, there are tiny puppets, capable of walking as well as sitting, who serve to us back to idyllic times when Albert in Adelaide were young, and to less idyllic times when Albert, just like   Adelaide’s jealously possessive father, wants to keep her locked up against the world.

At other times when Albert narrates scenes of war and devastation, a small sketchbook full of cut-out figures becomes the source of shadow puppetry, operated by the young girl. We can all see exactly how this works, but it does not take away from the magic.

The puppetry in this production is deceptively simple and a pleasure to watch, but to me, the main source of delight is the fact that at no point does any actor/puppeteer condescend to the audience by putting on silly voices and talking about nothing.

On the contrary, this is a genuine play that tells us about lost love, about the desire to possess, and about the capacity to re-fertilise both the Earth itself and our human emotions.

With its restraint and maturity, it touches the heart.

Strongly recommended.

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Helen Musa

Helen Musa

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