Pickled Image: Wolf Tales ¦ Photo: Farrows Creative

Puppetship / Pickled Image: Sparkle / Wolf Tales

Pickled Image: Wolf Tales ¦ Photo: Farrows Creative

Puppetship’s Sparkle is a show for very young children, and in fact is not so much a show as an extremely well-managed environment which allows its audience to take in as much or as little as they like. A big white parasol covers the performance area and the audience (parents and their children) sit in a circle around the space.

The lighting and the gentle electronic music suggest a subterranean world which is populated by flashing night-lights, silky materials, kitchen utensils and feathers which can assemble themselves into undersea creatures at the hands of the two puppeteers before being left on the floor.

What’s most interesting to watch is the reaction of the young children. It doesn’t take long for them to relax and explore their surroundings, and the performing space thus becomes a mix of performers gently introducing new elements into the proceedings and small children confidently wandering around exploring the objects and materials on offer.  A tower made of plastic tumblers is a magnet for those who like to knock such things down just as a big metal bowl is perfect to put or throw things in. One small child stuck a flashing light in her mouth whilst another took advantage of the low lighting to make a dash for areas of the room behind the curtains.

Just as older children will discover the right amount of anarchy with which to fill a space, so their younger counterparts won’t notice certain effects but will instead explore a tiny detail to one side which has caught their attention. It is to the performers’ credit that this doesn’t derail proceedings. In fact this exploration of an environment becomes the point of the show.

In Pickled Image’s Wolf Tales, Red Riding the Musical is taking place behind the curtain and we, the audience are in a backstage dressing room listening to what’s happening onstage unseen. There’s some howling; it’s the end of a scene and the person whose dressing room we are in comes off stage to take a breather.

The occupant of the dressing  room is a wolf, a splendid full body sized puppet. The puppeteer in black bunraku-style hood and clothing stands behind the puppet. His right hand is in the head of the wolf, and his left arm is the left arm of the wolf; the creature’s feet are on metal plates attached to the shoes of the puppeteer. The wolf wears a Cruella Da Ville style fur coat which emphasises his acTOR-ish  nature. Welcoming us backstage he then regales us with the truth behind Little Red Riding Hood and The Three Little Pigs.

Soon it’s time for the wolf to go on-stage and his place is taken by Red Riding Hood’s grandmother – another full-sized puppet, this time in a wheelchair and sporting an extremely dyspeptic nature. She sets about undermining the wolf’s version of events.

Dik Downey is the puppeteer and proves himself to be a terrific performer. He inhabits both characters effortlessly and such is his skill  that you look at the puppets at all times rather than switch between them and the puppeteer. The jokes come thick and fast and his background in street theatre ensures that any interruptions from the audience are skilfully and amusingly dealt with. Thus the show feels like it’s designed especially for that audience in that space rather than something that is trotted out.

Wolf Tales is a lovely piece of rollicking entertainment.

Rossendale Puppet Festival featured twelve shows in a wide variety of puppet styles with events and workshops happening all over the building, in the garden, and on the road just outside the back gate. All this was programmed on a shoestring budget.

Somehow Horse + Bamboo manage to fit programming and organising this weekend-long puppet festival into their extremely busy touring schedule and for that we should be (if we are not already) extremely grateful.

www.pickledimage.co.uk / www.puppetshipcic.pbworks.com