International Puppet Festival Ireland 2011

Various venues, Dublin and Mermaid Arts Centre, Bray, Co Wicklow Tomorrow-Sun Oct 30 01-2724302 puppetfest.ie

The theatre aims to show us familiar human behaviour while making it strange enough to be remarkable. Few forms of performance have done this with the ease of puppetry - and none more sweetly.

Still, even in its 20th year, the International Puppet Festival Ireland must honour a divided audience: those who recognise the sophistication of marionettes, shadow puppets, rod-puppets and Bunraku manipulations, and those for whom a hand puppet beating his wife at the end of the pier is the way to do it. Well, not quite, Punch.

Extending its bases to venues in Dublin city centre, Dún Laoghaire and now Bray, this year's festival features 13 international puppet companies whose shows are aimed at adults, children and family audiences respectively.

British company Noisy Oyster puts its marionettes on flying trapezes in

Da Silva Marionette Circus Troupe

(Mermaid Arts Centre, Bray Sat 3.30pm); China's Childhood Puppets combines the country's traditional and modern forms (Mermaid Sat 3.30pm), while Yorkshire group Thingumajig performs a first World War reminiscence in

A November Day

(Lambert Puppet Theatre Sat 7.30pm; Mermaid Sun 7.30pm).

Such a varied programme recognises the pleasure of the form and acknowledges that the apparent innocence of puppetry is always slyly deceptive. As eloquent as it is subversive, puppetry is a delight with all strings attached.