"THE POET, THE PUPPET AND THE PRISONER" at Pegasus Players in Truman College’s O’Rourke Center for the Performing Arts
BY LUCIA MAURO
Before Blair Thomas’ one-man-band chamber puppet show begins, audiences’ imaginations are vividly sparked by the elaborate found-object toy stage before them – including Thomas, in tattered tux and white makeup, sitting anxiously and forlornly in a far corner. This carousel of hand-carved/hand-painted puppets dangling precariously amid bicycle wheels, colanders, tubas, piano keys and a creaky assortment of hand-cranked instruments (like a gramophone and player piano) is immensely alive in its mysterious stillness.
Strange how that kinetic energy deadens during the actual performance. The premise of "The Poet, the Puppet and the Prisoner" – receiving its world premiere at Pegasus Players’ O’Rourke Center for the Performing Arts in Truman College by the newly formed Blair Thomas & Co. – is that of an imprisoned puppeteer who must enact four puppet shows that take us through the "stages of man." Text is provided by Spanish poet-dramatist Federico Garcia Lorca, who was murdered by Nationalist partisans in 1936.
But the womb-to-tomb continuum is not immediately apparent, especially in Thomas’ surreal choice of material that is ultimately ill-suited to the dramatic-puppet form. One gets the sense that something profound and macabre is happening. Yet the puppeteer -- engaged in a chaotic swirl of operating gadgets and instruments and different styles of marionettes, throwing his voice and manipulating scenery – fails to release this production’s soul-defining spirit.
It’s especially disheartening since Thomas – a founder of Redmoon Theatre and an infinitely talented artist – has demonstrated his grave and whimsical ingenuity in past creations. "The Poet…" would probably work better as an installation at the Museum of Contemporary Art, with Thomas intermittently stepping in to bring one of the four "stages" to life. As a 90-minute performance piece, it takes the form of a bizarre endurance test – one in which audiences are no doubt intrigued and impressed with Thomas’ operatic multi-tasking, yet held captive in a state of utter bafflement over what the heck the puppeteer is trying to say.
The Lorca texts selected (featuring translations by Catherine Brown) only add to the esoteric confusion. Thomas opens with the disturbing, out-of-context "Buster Keaton Stroll," using rod puppets mimicking the stone-faced silent-movie comedian. In it, he murders his four children, then embarks on a bicycle trip to the country to find his true love – all executed with painfully self-aware deadpan resolve. Granted, it’s easy to gasp at the "colorized" magic of a former black-and-white scene or the half-woman/half-nightingale puppet, "whose striped legs quiver in the grass like dying zebras." But the vignette is quite empty and disturbing – and says little about birth.
Although, scenically, Thomas does make an intriguing statement about birth’s close connection to death. The crushed white-muslin curtains are reminiscent of the fabric that lines a coffin or frames the windows of a hearse. The last puppet stage is shrouded in purple curtains of the same design – that also reminded me of Lily Munster’s cape.
Between each section, Thomas runs around the outer perimeters of the carousel trying to jump on -- as if he’s hopping on a train to nowhere. The motif is not entirely clear and grows pretentious. His second sequence, "Chimera," follows the ponderous journey of a Spanish farm family as the father leaves for work and his wife and children earnestly await his return. The clunkier marionettes he employs add to the dark and heavy – and sleep-inducing – tone.
The most lively of the quartet, the third puppet stage presents an rural Iberian precursor to "Punch and Judy." It’s also one of the more disturbing pieces on the bill. An evil, opportunistic doctor – Don Cristobal – sets out to marry a ripe young woman, who is essentially sold to him by her mother. The young woman turns out to be a nymphomaniac and proceeds to graphically cuckhold the semi-impotent Cristobal with other men as he sleeps. Thomas employs rapid-fire-moving wooden hand puppets.
The puppeteer often jumps out of the rickety wooden-plank puppet stage to portray – through a clever but monotonous form of costume flipping – a harried female puppeteer and the show’s gruff, mustachioed producer. Class struggle is addressed in this piece, but not in a way that would speak to modern American audiences. And that’s the greatest fault of his choice of Lorca poems – they don’t translate effectively to contemporary viewers.
The final stage is not exactly a puppet set-up. Instead, Thomas mournfully moves a three-part wafer-thin scroll of Cubist-like sketches illustrating the poem, "Ghazal of Dark Death."
Sadly, all the sound and fury of Thomas’ object theater signifies nothing in this simultaneously overblown and intensely interior production. It’s a feast for the eyes; famine for the soul.
Director Curt Columbus does not carry Thomas beyond the realm of a lecture-demonstration of four different styles of puppetry. Interestingly, the show begins with Thomas attempting to speak but getting interrupted by a player piano. This motif is dropped altogether, and I wonder what new dimensions could have been revealed had Thomas more compellingly integrated silence with dialogue.
There are eternally fascinating visual touches in a faux-Magritte sort of way. Jaymi Lee Smith’s sepulchral lighting enhances Thomas’ intricately distressed designs, with additional design expertise by Sue Haas, Lisa Barcy, Jesse Mooney-Bullock, John Musial and Dan Reilly.
But "The Poet…" proved to be a creepy and disquieting experience. It makes no provocative statements and tells no meaningful stories. It’s like a deliberate Outsider Art approach to puppetry. And the result is -- no doubt unintentionally -- soulless and self-indulgent.•
"The Poet, the Puppet and the Prisoner" runs through December 8 at Pegasus Players’ O’Rourke Center for the Performing Arts in Truman College, 1145 W. Wilson. Tickets: $15-$20. Call 773-878-9761 or log onto www.pegasusplayers.org.
