Show: Citizen Puppet
Society: Edinburgh Festival Fringe
Venue: Pleasance Courtyard
Credits: Blind Summit
Type: Sardines
Author: Chris Abbott
Performance Date: 08/08/2015
Citizen Puppet
Chris Abbott | 09 Aug 2015 10:05am
Verbatim transcript plays have become more common in recent years, with actors speaking the words of real people, fed to them via earphones. Citizen Puppet, we are told in the Press Release, is a verbatim True Crime Murder Mystery puppet docudrama; a typically original slant for the ever-inventive Blind Summit, surely the UK’s leading creator of puppet work for adults. “We decided to make this play,” the puppets tell us, talking about themselves as puppets living together quietly until, one day, a giant fell dead in the village of Massiveille.
Devised and directed by Blind Summit Artistic Director Mark Down, this is puppet theatre of a high order. The drama that unfolds through the recollections of the characters adopts the procedures of a police investigation but is in fact a re-imagining of Jack and the Beanstalk.
The unseen Jack, it is discovered, has a creature who is half-woman half-harp tied up in his house. We gradually realise that what we are watching is not a performance of a puppet verbatim transcript drama, but a rehearsal of a puppet verbatim transcript drama, under the control of a puppet director.
The puppets include a Granny, a detective, a police officer, a nurse, a vicar, an aristocrat, a young girl and the hippie director, Daz. The eight characters, portrayed by five performers (Laura Caldow, Fiona Clift, Samuel Dutton, Simon Scardifield and Jake Waring), are brought on stage on armchairs, benches or seats, all with elongated legs to bring the puppets within reach of the puppeteers.
At first glance this has the look of a ventriloquists’ convention, but the effect soon passes and the black hooded performers become invisible as we become familiar with this group of people, although they keep reminding us they are puppets. The playful way in which the characters talk about their life as puppets is both novel and entertaining; as one character says “I got this outfit on eBay, it was meant for a Cabbage Patch Doll.” We are reminded of the unreal nature of the figure, and yet at the same time we totally believe in it.
The pace is tremendous from the beginning, and the combination of voice and lip-synch is faultless. But this is about much more than technical expertise of a high order; this is a performance by a company on the top of their game, confident, thrilling and yet ending all too quickly. A must-see!
- : admin
- : 08/08/2015