Welcome to Puppet Season at the Artlog, and a first week in which we’ll be specifically celebrating contemporary puppetry. All this because I’m right in the middle of creating the puppets for the forthcoming The Mare’s Tale for Mid Wales Chamber Orchestra, and so puppets are much on my mind.
We kick off with a combination of the old and new: the old in the person of Mr Punch, and the new in the sprightly reinvention of him by that exponent of all things puppety, Mr Julian Crouch.
Above: Shockheaded Peter
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In 1996 Julian Crouch, together with Lee Simpson and Phelim McDermott, became the three founding artistic directors of Improbable Theatre. Crouch was co-director and co-designer of the West End hit show that had pantomime and puppetry at its heart, Shockheaded Peter. Based on the 1845 German children’s book Der Struwwelpeter by Heinrich Hoffmann, Shockheaded Peter had been commissioned by the West Yorkshire Playhouse and the Lyric Hammersmith, and debuted in Leeds before moving to London in 1998 and thereafter appearing on a world tour.
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Mr Punch with Julian Crouch
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The set for The Devil and Mr Punch.
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The Devil and Mr Punch was originally produced by Improbable, commissioned by the Barbican (London), Walker Art Center (Mineapolis) and the Philadelphia Live Arts Festival. The production was directed by Crouch, who devised it with Rob Thirtle, Nick Haverson, John Foti, Saskia Lane, Jessica Scott and Seamus Maynard. While not the first time Punch has been restored to his full, murderous horror by those intent on firmly kicking all the fey, kiddie-friendly, new-man revisionism of the 20th-21st centuries into the wings… credit must be given to opera composer Harrison Birtwhistle and Czech film-maker Jan Svankmejer for having long since achieved that… nevertheless Crouch is to be commended for returning the character to his puppet origins. Punch is the offspring of devils and whores, born in the gutter and reared to be master of mayhem. It’s good to see Crouch and his associates raise the puppet’s ghost to its full, awful splendour, and to once more give the devil his due.
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“As you would expect from Crouch, one of theatre’s great designers, The Devil & Mister Punchis a visual delight, played out on a design like a wooden advent calendar full of apertures and trap doors through which the puppets and actors appear. There are shifts of perspective and size, and it’s chock-full of visual puns and jokes as well as mishearing and double-entendres – all are played to ingenious and often comic effect.” – London Guardian
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“It is an ingenious, surreal piece of theatre, chiefly enjoyable for the mix of the farcical and the macabre, and for its quizzical approach to the relationship between the puppeteer and his puppets.” – Financial Times of London
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