HAPPY
Edwin J Bernard reviews Ronnie Burkett's latest puppet show at Gardner Arts Centre, Brighton, 22-25 May 2003.
Ronnie Burkett's Theatre of Marionettes worked another miracle with the final production of his 'Memory Dress Trilogy', Happy, which closed the Brighton Festival in May. Canadian-born Burkett is less a puppeteer, more a playwright-illusionist, able to express deeply moving emotions and radical ideas through the magic of marionettes. Individually his skills, as puppet-maker, set-designer, writer, and performer, are remarkable, but together they are unique. Last year's Street of Blood had an AIDS theme, and Happy is about death, loss and grieving. Sounds like fun, you say?
Well, in Burkett's hands (literally) it's a remarkably rich, emotionally satisfying - and yes comic - experience. Young poet Carla unexpectedly loses her hip, cool Drew. As she and her oddball, aged neighbours deal with the loss, camp Antoine Marionette, queen of the bitchy one-liner, emcees the Grey Cabaret which mirrors Carla's five stages of grief: denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance.
Mind-blowing plot twists take us through every conceivable feeling. Like Street of Blood, Burkett's agenda is both satirical and cathartic; ironic that such inanimate objects can be so life-affirming.
Happy is now retired, but miss his new show, Provenance, next year at your peril. (At the Barbican, London and as part of Manchester's Queen Up North festival in the spring.)
For more details, visit Burkett's agent's website at: www.johnlambert.ca
Labels:
2003,
Positive Nation,
theatre
