Puppet shows come in many different formats and are perhaps still mainly associated with children’s theatre displays at the seaside. Television programmes in the modern era have also used the genre to great effect and with popular results. I’m thinking of Gerry Anderson and Supermarionation. Coincidentally he produced an early, little-known TV programme called Four Feather Falls, which was a puppet cowboy series. Croon productions are a puppet theatre company who are part of a modern cohort who show us that puppetry and object theatre can be serious entertainment for adults.
Their previous shows have included “NOIR: A Dick Privet mystery” about a private detective who is hired to find a missing person and “Attack of the 50-foot woman” (based on the film of the same name), which is about… well, a 50-foot woman. So, we know they like filmic themes, B-movies and pastiche. It’s no surprise then that this show is a parody of spaghetti westerns done with rod marionettes, puppets and toy theatre.
The audience walk in as a funky version of the theme from The Good, Bad and the Ugly is played; the villain appears with his gang to commit the predictable bank robbery and the man with no name rides into town for the showdown. The western atmosphere is fashioned with Spanish guitar music and understated lighting. We have some archetypal characters: the sheriff, the evil baddy and the bar room girls doing a can-can dance routine. There is tumbleweed and cactus; a saloon with a lively pianola and a cemetery with tombstones. Most of the themes are taken and reworked from the cinematic worlds of Sergio Leone, Clint Eastwood the original spaghetti westerns of course, but there is also a nice contemporary twist at the end.
What’s ingenious about the way Croon do their stuff is that most of the scenery appears from two reconstructed pianos. The pianos, or bits of them, become a sandy dessert, a western frontier town or a graveyard, and from their flipsides the bank and saloon are revealed. The puppets, toys and props are gathered from behind the pianos and worked in a very hands-on way by the two talented puppeteers Pod Farlow and Emily LeQuesne. They also give us mime and slapstick to punctuate the performance; they fool around and jest with each other as they move and operate the props, the puppets and the scenery. The performance is original, comic and inventive even though it lacks some pace and sparkle. Never the less the enthusiastic audience seemed to be having fun and that’s a credit to the engaging charm of the performers. ★★★☆☆ Adrian Mantle 12th October 2106
