The Adventures of Alvin Sputnik is an elegant and touching piece of solo theatrical storytelling that effortlessly fuses digital projection, puppetry and live music to draw you into a very idiosyncratic visual world. The focus on stage is a large round screen, reminiscent of the round window of a space ship, or a bubble, and beautifully echoed by the large polystyrene ball helmet that Alvin dons when he decides to take on the role of underwater explorer. We step into a world within worlds.
Alvin (Tim Watts) is grieving for the loss of his wife; the brief story of their relationship is related in a very filmic animation (all panning cameras and shifting close-ups) that scrolls across the round screen. The oceans have risen and humanity is in the last desperate throes of a panicked bid for survival masterminded by a Biggles-type (cue comically wiggling stick-on moustache) whose hair-brained schemes have sent plenty of those remaining to a watery (or fiery or explosive) death. Alvin, following the glowing soul of his lost love takes up the quest, diving into this new water-world in an attempt to find a hidden crater that will miraculously restore a habitable human world.
There are moments when it feels the cuteness is in danger of overpowering the material, but Watt’s vision of the rest of humanity is determinedly bleak – greedy, fearful, thoughtless. In the underwater world Sputnik finds more constant companions: a tiny glowing creature who feels like a friend and who he eventually shoos off to a family, a funky disco ball (that prompts some obligatory puppet disco dancing), and a curious whale briefly animated by his wife’s spirit. The puppetry is simple and beautifully executed – a gloved hand and a lit polystyrene ‘helmet’ charmingly step, climb and swim across the disc. The aesthetic feels entirely original and homemade – Watts has made the animation and does some live drawing onto the disc from his mac, plays the ukulele, and has picked out the pop score that keeps us vitally in a contemporary, and not a fairytale, world.
The show was initially produced for the Blue Room Theatre in Perth and its slick rhythm and detailed production choices reflect an extensive touring history since then, the piece travelling around Australia, the US and now the UK, picking up awards en route. No word is extraneous, no gesture out of place.