One of the first indications that everything was not quite right was the Russian Goldilocks. Far from having a mop of striking blond curls, she had two sombre plaits of a hue best described as mousy.
Even before that, however, the programme for the ninth International Puppet Festival Ireland, which is organised and run by the Dublin-based Lambert Puppet Theatre, had hinted at the trouble ahead. This year's festival has 15 shows for children and adults, with first-time visits from the Czech Republic, Brazil and Austria. Also for the first time, the festival is using the Pavilion Theatre, in D·n Laoghaire, in addition to its own premises, in Monkstown.
Given that audiences are reading about unfamiliar companies, a good programme should at least provide clear and succinct information about them and their shows. It should also make you want to see more of the festival. The opaquely written programme was of no help, however.
The Goldilocks came from Theatre Koekla's Russian Fairy-Tale, an interpretation of Goldilocks And The Three Bears performed by Christina Boukova. She used a large book as the set, with pages that opened to tell the story scene by scene. The programme said Boukova has "been telling this story to many children worldwide"; which is to say, she's had time to get it right.
She could not have got it more wrong. There was nothing fresh in her telling of the tale, which was a tired and relentless rendition. The story-book set's dull illustrations had pop-up features, but these frequently fell limply over. The marionette work with Goldilocks and the bears was unforgivably sloppy, and the intrusive running commentary from Boukova was often unintelligible. By the time the bears arrived, I hoped they would devour the mousy one, but, alas, they all lived happily ever after.
Flatfoot, a production from the Netherlands with Connie de la Mar and Helene Torringa, was worse. The highlights of this charmless slapstick plot, which involved a runaway witch and a girl stuck in her bathroom, involved bottom-pinching, snot-eating and farting. Children laughed, but children will also happily eat burgers and chips, even though they are equally capable of appreciating imaginatively prepared food.
I arrived for the third show of the day, Miss Sony - staged by Black Light Theatre of the Czech Republic - with low expectations. But here was something exceptional: a beautiful, inventive, funny, gasp-inducing, feet-stamping wow of a show. Frantisek Kratochvil and a skilled crew of seven presented a piece that was silent except for music: a series of witty and thought-provoking meditations on television and its impact on viewers.
Watching materials as simple as fluorescent cardboard and ultraviolet light, we saw eerily convincing images - a car, a camel, an elephant, a horse, a string of African dancers - emerge from a television set, seemingly conjured up from nowhere, to the delight of the mystified audience. The car was driven, the horse was ridden, the dancers shook their bare breasts and laughed silently while the audience roared aloud.
The very loose plot involved a man in love with his television set - Miss Sony - much to the disgust of his wife, who kept breaking it. A moral fable for our times, the show produced a visual charm every minute.
The only jarring note was the unfortunate scene in which Kratochvil, dressed in cowboy gear, shot down illuminated planes. It was a scene that should have been edited out, if only for the fact that it may have prompted the audience to lose their concentration, after recent dreadful events. Sensibilities will be raw for a long time to come when it comes to crashing aircraft and falling skyscrapers.
Company Philippe Genty, the respected French troupe, presented Zigmund Follies. As it did not advertise the fact that it was in French, and as I do not speak French, I was left to try to review a show I could not understand.
Puppetry should transcend language, as its focus is visual, but not so with this production, which involved speech throughout.
As it happened, I went to the show with a native French speaker, who told me that many of the jokes were based on complicated wordplay. This makes you suspect that you would have needed a sophisticated grasp of the language to follow Zigmund Follies. There was a two-page scene-by-scene synopsis in English available at the door, but I saw this only as I was walking in, and didn't have time to read it.
I saw only four of the 15 shows, yet that amounts to almost a third of the programme, a random selection of which should repay any attendance, as one would assume the shows are of a similar quality. Ronan Tully, whose has just programmed his first year of the festival, confirms that all 15 productions had been "personally seen". They were selected, he said, "from hundreds of shows". I'm glad I didn't have to see the rejects.
International Puppet Festival Ireland runs until Sunday. For further information, or to make bookings, call 01-2800974 or 01-2312929 or see www.lambertpuppettheatre.com
