Author Archives: Adam Bennett

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About Adam Bennett

Adam Bennett is a professional puppeteer, theatre maker, dramaturg and performance tutor. His 30-year career has seen him tour and perform professionally in Australia, Asia and Europe, as well as develop and manage shows for DNA Puppetry and Visual Theatre, The Western Australian Youth Theatre Company, and Little Angel Theatre.

Fittings Multimedia Arts | Krazy Kat |Royal Exchange Theatre: Edmund the Learned Pig

This performance is placed in a sideshow carnival circus world, and is presented by Fittings Multimedia Arts, a Liverpool based disability led arts organisation – most of the spoken word is also signed by Kinny Gardner and Caroline Parker, Sally Clay playing the bearded lady on the keyboards is sight impaired and Garry Robson plays The Boss ringmaster character from his wheelchair.

The performance begins with a funeral – Edmund’s life has ended and the story of his life begins. The show is down on its luck – the aerialist has vertigo, the tattooed lady Missus has nothing to cook apart from Mr Mesmo’s performing doves and is considering taking up cutlery throwing. The arrival of a clever talking pig – puppeteered and voiced by Anthony Cairns – means a potential lucrative new act. Edmund is on a mission, however, given to him by his mum: find out where all his older brothers and sisters have gone.

Full of entertaining turns, songs, acts and mysteries to solve, this show packs a lot into a relatively short time. The centre of the show is Edmund, who moves from humble ingenue to big-headed star, innocent creature to aficionado of George Orwell’s Animal Farm. A series of placards regularly changed at the side of the stage provides the story chapters – and if there isn’t an illustrated book for children to accompany this show, there should be to help the audience remember everything that has happened. There is no single stand-out performance as the cast and crew work as an ensemble to create this show, with individual turns for each of the character acts.

At one stage Edmund is blindfolded as part of his act – a bold move that doesn’t quite work as the magic of the puppet is in his eyes and as soon as they are covered the puppeteer becomes too noticeable. There are some wonderful turns and sequences. Kinny Gardner delivers some hauntingly beautiful songs in a high-pitched contralto. Annette Walker as the silent Ariella is beautifully engaging, and provides the perfect wrap up to this powerfully engaging piece of theatre for all ages and abilities.

Gideon and Hubcap: The Gideon and Hubcap show

The tiny space of the Underbelly’s Wee Coo seems appropriate for a musical duo who tour by accepting invitations to play in the living rooms, sheds and social spaces of people recommended by previous audience members. Thus begins a night of songs sung in close harmony, including some wonderfully funny song lyrics; a huge variety of musical instruments played with skill; and comic gags and turns of all kinds.

Gideon is a ‘stove top’ country folk troubadour from a great American tradition with a fine singing voice and down-home charm that is downright dangerous. Hubcap is a bespectacled archaeologist of historical musicology with wit aplenty. The songs are so enjoyable to hear the audience hangs on every word, not wanting to laugh too much in case they miss the next line. Every so often the songs are interspersed with jingles for their ‘sponsors’, Johnson’s Edible Bugs.

This lovable musical duo isn’t afraid to go for the cheap and cheesy laugh or the almost corny visual joke, but neither are they afraid to lay down the most wickedly salacious lyric or expose their own flaws and vulnerabilities, taking outrageous risks in their endless varieties of props, instruments, routines and songs. This is Abbot and Costello meet Bob Hope and Bing Crosby; a Marx Brothers for the 21st century.

One cannot help but be charmed by this unpretentious pair of contemporary American vaudevillians, but sometimes it feels that they keep filling each moment with as many gags, pranks, witty lyrics and stunning musicianship in a youthfully determined effort to amuse and entertain. If, in a few years, Gideon and Hubcap are still presenting their living room music and entertainment show, it would be great to see them relying less on the props and gags and more on the beautiful, witty and poignant songs they do so well.

Lowri Jenkins - Invisible City

Lowri Jenkins: Invisible City

Lowri Jenkins - Invisible CityThis one-woman show written and performed by Lowri Jenkins is very simply staged using translucent vertical blue drapes and quite a lot of lemons. Chronicling a young woman’s transition from rural to big city life – through a series of phone calls to her mum, visits to the shop, and attempts to find work (and love) – Lowri Jenkins uses voice, physicality, voiceover, and lemons to create an internal and external portrait of the joys and difficulties of ‘transitioning’.

Lowri’s presentation is accomplished and completely engaging. She begins brilliantly haltingly right at the front of the stage, keeping the audience in a moment of high suspense before launching into her first conversation with her mother, whose voice we never get to hear ourselves. This device parallels and counterpoints beautifully with her visits to the shop, where all we get to hear is the increasingly absurd corporate announcements. Lowri’s face is a picture as she listens with excitement and innocence to the wonders of the loyalty card offer.

Increasingly struggling to hold herself together in her new environment, the movement choreography, text, and lighting all combine to create a build of anxiety and pressure which climaxes in the spurring and absurd image of lemons – which have been suspended above the stage (in shopping baskets) – raining down on the hapless girl. Soon Lowri finds herself forced to fictionalise – to start making up a great life and lovely boyfriend in a bid to keep her mother from finding out how tough she is finding everything. This show has enough dramaturgy to support the more expressionistic parts of the performance and keeps us on the edge of our seats from beginning to end.

Skottes Musikteater - The Story of Faust - Photo by Britt Mattson

Skottes Musikteater: The Story of Faust

Skottes Musikteater - The Story of Faust - Photo by Britt MattsonThis show is rough but glorious puppetry and superb musicianship in a version of the classic Faust that is wonderfully easy to follow. Three men greet us and display proudly the playboard for the puppetry that is also a magnificently roughly hand-made musical instrument. The men are all excellent musicians and singers, which they make clear from the start by performing a musical overture.

Singing in harmony and for the most part speaking in wonderfully simple and clear English (this is a Scandinavian company which made a huge opera of Faust, and created The Story of Faust as a companion piece for younger audiences), they use roughly-made puppets, simple automata and scraps of foam and fabric fur to tell the story of the scientist/scholar/researcher Faust and the wolf-like demon from Hell Mephistopheles – or Mephisto to his friends.

There are plenty of charming moments in this piece. The cool Mephisto, who is like a public servant from Hell, the talking heads on separate stands on either side of the playboard, the rough mechanical scene changes. The moral message is abundantly clear as well: Faust can have whatever he wants for the 24 years of ultimate power – as long as it’s sinful. Becoming royalty can’t happen as this is a God given thing. Marriage is out of the question as it is a union consecrated in Heaven. When the time is up Faust tries to repent but it is too late – he’s in the clutches of the Devil.

These three performers, while highly accomplished with their musical instruments, are less skilled and practiced with their puppets. The rough designs and fabrication of the puppets and set would make it hard for skilled puppeteers to get much out of them, and the places where this performance works best is in the music, singing, and witty wordplay. If more time, effort, and money were invested in skilled designers and puppet makers, this would be a little gem of a show. Yet despite its restrictions in this regard, it’s still a very good show for family audiences and makes the story of Faust both easy to understand and highly entertaining.

Widdershins - Magic Porridge Pot

Theatre of Widdershins: The Magic Porridge Pot and other Tasty Tales

Widdershins - Magic Porridge PotFraming the large table in the middle of the stage are, on one side, a menu on a chalkboard and on the other a pot-bellied stove. A few buckets full of stones lie around in front and a shopping trolley of porridge packets is behind. The menu for today is a starter of Porridge, main course Stone Soup and to finish a Gingerbread Man. All well and good as the charmingly engaging Andy Lawrence gets to work on delivering three tales beginning with ‘Once upon a Time…’

With a remarkable array of puppets and transforming objects, the three stories are told in this one-man show with wit and charm. They are told exactly as on the menu, and most of us are familiar enough with the tales to remember them fondly, but of course for the children in the audience it may be the first time. There’s an echo of Old Mother Hubbard about the first telling as granny and her dog run out of food and get a never-ending porridge pot from the magic curiosity shop. The table and boxes transform and transform again in a series of pleasing reveals. Rocks are stuck together to create a magnificent troll face and the audience is encouraged to throw imaginary ingredients into the soup pot. A shape is cut out of cookie dough and a hilarious gingerbread man runs riot over everything, including animals that appear out of buckets.

The whole show is great storytelling entertainment and the audience has a rollicking good time. Like a good meal out, you’re left with a satisfied feeling in your belly, but two key ingredients are a little light on the plate – some good emotional gristle to chew on and the spices of danger, tension and risk.