Edwin J Bernard

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

FOREIGN AIDS

Edwin J Bernard reviews Pieter Dirk-Uys' one-man show at Theatre Royal, Brighton, 18 May 2003.

In his one-man, multiple-personality show, Pieter Dirk Uys wryly remarks that his most famous creation, apartheid-yearning Evita Bezuidenhout, has been called South Africa's answer to Dame Edna. "What's the question?" he wonders.

Indeed. Whereas Barry Humphries is all frothy, sexual innuendo, Dirk Uys is primarily scathing, campaigning political satire. '

Foreign AIDS' is a remarkable tour-de-force offering an insight into the complexities (and complexes) that make up South Africa's AIDS experience. (An experience that has reached horrific proportions at this point in time.) One minute Dirk Uys reveals the incompetence and hypocrisy of President Thabo Mbeki's dissident view of HIV: "My mind is made up," he exclaims as Dr Thaboo MacBeki. "Do not confuse me with the facts."

Then there's Evita's scandalous sister, an ex-stripper with HIV who inadvertently married a Nazi and comes to London for her antiretrovirals. "Racism," she muses, "is easier to catch than AIDS."

In between constructing and deconstructing his characters on a bare stage filled with boxes of empty foreign aid bound for SA, Dirk Uys tells achingly funny, and astutely sobering, stories of real-life experiences promoting HIV awareness in his home country.

At the same time he addresses the South African parliament with a condom-covered dildo and describes visits to more than 160 schools with a shocking, but necessarily frank, show about safer sex called 'For Facts' Sake'.

While some have criticised his show for making light of tragedy, Dirk Uys firmly believes that "humour is a great weapon. I aim to make people laugh at their prejudices and confront their fears." Bullseye.

Pieter Dirk Uys should return to the UK next year. For more details contact UK Arts International on 020 7381 4115 or visit: www.evita.co.za/pieter

Labels: 2003, HIV, Positive Nation, theatre