2 STARS, December 1 – January 7. Richard Davies is disappointed by this season’s children’s show at the Puppet Theatre Barge in Little Venice
Having become great fans of the Puppet Theatre Barge’s annual summer season at Richmond riverside, this was the first time my daughter and I have made the trek into London to visit the travelling company at their regular mooring on the Regent’s Canal at Little Venice. It’s surprisingly easy to get there, a couple of stops on the Bakerloo past Paddington to Warwick Avenue and a few minutes walk.
Stepping onto the barge is always a thrill, with the sense of entering a magical, floating world of imagination and fantasy. The experience is not for everyone, however. As we descended the steep steps into the warm fug of the tiny café area, I overhead one landlubber ask why the barge was so “wonky”.
On the walls of the barge hang the dormant marionettes of countless productions from the company’s repertoire since it was founded back in 1982 by Gren and Juliet Middleton, (it's now run by the second and third generations of the family). The effect is macabre and slightly creepy. A giant sleeping puppet tiger guards the passage to the single toilet at the back of the boat with a lever and pump action flush (check the instructions on the door if you are unsure.)
This season’s production, The Little Christmas Tree, is a charming, modern fairy tale about a little boy called Joe who develops a special friendship with a crooked conifer. In spite of its diminutive size and bent branches (caused by sheltering a menagerie of woodland animal friends during a violent storm), the little tree has the ability to speak, but only to those with the ability to hear. Joe is just such a person, though inevitably, neither his teenage sister nor parents share this gift.
Although touching in parts, especially an enchanting shadow puppetry dream sequence, for me this production did not match up to the wonderful experiences we have enjoyed in the past. The story is simply too predictable, and for once, the puppetry was prosaic and, dare I say it, lacking in artistry. Watching the puppet characters show their excitement by doing a little spot dance while rubbing their thighs Vic Reeves style, I found myself thinking, “well, I could do that.” This sense was compounded when, near the end of the first half, a puppeteer accidentally dropped the controls for the little Christmas tree, bonking poor little Joe on the head and causing the tree to remain lifeless until the curtain came down. Given that the extent of its animation was a twitching of a single branch, this accident didn’t significantly detract from the audience’s enjoyment. It reminded me of that scene in The Truman Show when Jim Carrey is nearly taken out by a light falling out of the fake sky dome.
In making these criticisms, it should be stated that this is a children’s show, so it could be considered churlish to say that it lacked emotional depth. But my point is that kiddy shows only really work when the parents are entertained, because, let’s face it, the kids themselves don’t get much from it. This was a matinee show, so at times, the soundtrack was nearly drowned out by all the coughs, whimperings, sniffs and random exclamations, though hats off to the kid behind me who yelled “it’s a duck!” when a puppet owl swooped across the stage. My daughter and I also had to put up with a child sitting next to us with blue lights on his shoes that dazzled in the darkness every time he kicked the seat in front of him (which was pretty much constantly). So sadly for us “Little Christmas Tree” was a miss, but we still look forward to next summer in Richmond.
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