The Night Zoo written and directed by Michael Barlow, designed
by Iona McAuley, music composed by Lee Buddle. Spare Parts Puppet
Theatre at The Street Theatre, April 26-30, 2011 (Wednesday – Saturday
10am and 2pm).
Reviewed by Frank McKone
April 26
I
had always thought of the company name, Spare Parts, as a whimsical
joke, perhaps even a little sad originally when financial support was a
struggle. Perhaps it still is. But this production, skilfully
performed by Katya Shevtsov and Jacob Lehrer (who were
‘phantasmagorical’ according to my five-year-old companion), was spare
in the sense of being ‘poor theatre’. Less complexity on stage meant
more opportunity for our imaginations to fill in the links which create
the theatrical illusion.
The story is traditional in
form. Jamie cannot have pets in the high rise flat where she lives,
dreams of the animals in the zoo who at first take no notice of her, but
dreams again of becoming friends and playing with them. Later in the
park with her parents she plays with a dog who has no home, and her
parents agree to let her keep him as a pet. There is, of course romance
and some sentimentality, since it seems that the parents will be
breaking the no-pet rule, but for young isolated children the purpose is
to encourage forming positive relationships. Jamie’s dream not only
stimulates enjoyment and empathy with the animals, but also changes her
parents’ standard ‘sorry, but no’ approach to realising that their
lonely child needs a companion.
Some of the stage
‘business’ which might have made the production less spare if it had all
been physically represented, such as the time and locality transitions,
were neatly done by video projection. The result was a layering of
dramatic frames from two-dimensional story-book format to
three-dimensional ‘reality’. The mode-shifting involved the performers
acting as people, in costume as animals and as puppeteers, with
transitions from one kind of role to another smoothly done.
Though from the children’s point of view The Night Zoo
is engaging and directly accessible – apparently simple – the show is a
nice example of modern performance puppetry – not so simple as it
looks.
© Frank McKone, Canberra
No comments:
Post a Comment