Puppet play pleases

Press, Volume CXVI, Issue 34097, 8 March 1976, Page 16

Puppet play pleases

“Journey to the Centre of the Universe,” written and performed by the Mandala Puppet Theatre, Museum Theatrette, March 6 to 20. Running time: One hour.

Every city should have a permanent puppet theatre; for too long now, Christchurch has relied on occasional public appearances of backyard Punch and Judy enthusiasts, and the recently formed Mandala Puppet Theatre deserves every encouragement in its plans to explore the full range of puppetry. If the premier of its first completely original work on Saturday showed a certain amount of hesitancy and imprecision, it w’as also very pleasing to see little reliance on sure-fire conventional methods and materials, and a general atmosphere of invention and enterprise; the group can succeed in this, provided that it allows for several important audience factors.

Puppetry in New Zealand virtually begins and ends with one man; Arnold Goodwin, whose touring marionette theatre productions oi Shakespearean plays in the 1940 s were wideiy acclaimed as being in world class. Seeing Arnold Goodwin put Caiiban through his paces on the floor of the retirement bach he built himself is one of the most exciting theatrical experiences I can remember, and there are, of course, plenty of theatregoers who have seen his full productions. Since a devastating fire at Auckland University put the Goodwin Marionettes into retirement, a new generation has appeared which has unwittingly developed from television a connoisseur taste in glove puppetry, and it is from this generation that the Mandala Puppet Theatre must find its audiences.

Although he will not be able to explain it, any eight-year-old knows that a modelled finger-puppet cannot have anything like the facial expressivity of a glove puppet with flexible features.

For modelled puppets, meticulous and sophisticated lighting is absolutely vital, and, since the scale of their operations is obviously limited, in terms of theatre economics they are a risky venture; even the Museum Theatrette is really not intimate enough for work on the scale of the Mandala Puppets, and before the group builds up a large collection of properties it should consider increasing its scale to something approaching Arnold Goodwin’s. The play now in production is an ambitious one about a boy who travels from planet to planet trying to find his heart. It is rather complicated, it does not allow much scope for audience confrontation, and if you do not fol-

low it closely its implications seem rather gruesome. It seems silly that the one performing art-form which is not limited by biomechanics should use a play that could work on the ordinary stage: why not adapt a known story that could not possibly be staged (say “Beowulf” or “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner”) and really capitalise on the freedom of form available to the puppeteer? For all that, I must say that most of the children on Saturday were obviously entertained by the programme, which is bound to be a very popular Festival item. If I have emphasised its weaknesses, it is simply because I see it as too valuable a venture to risk an early death. —Howard McNaughton.