Bunk Puppets and Scamp Theatre: Swamp Juice

Bunk Puppets and Scamp Theatre: Swamp Juice

Bunk Puppets and Scamp Theatre: Swamp Juice

Swamp Juice offers shadow puppetry to tickle the senses of adults and children alike. It’s a jiggling, gobbling journey of rolling eyes, wagging chins, monsters with wiry hair and pincer-like attacks.

The show is also always watchable on the two levels of projected and live movement. It opens up the workings of the puppetry, so one moment you are watching a tinsel and cardboard cut-out or undulating hand movements, and the next your eyes are drawn to the black-and-white shadow. Another dimension is added with 3D glasses, so a jellyfish swerves unnervingly towards you…

Swamp Juice is presented by Canadian puppeteer Jeff Achtem in madcap professor style. He adds some humorous asides (‘don’t worry, kids, it’s not a documentary’) and directions, as well as heartfelt marketing at the end. His persona and the slightly backyard, home-made feel may not appeal to everyone, but they do not detract from the skill involved.

Swamp Juice is based around visual games more than a clear narrative. Or perhaps the plot got a bit lost. However, you remember the bird flying within the audience and on a side wall, the jazzy underwater bubbles, the two-headed creature that combined frog, beetle and wings.

Expectations were high for this show (unscientific it may be, but someone in a queue volunteered during a flyering moment that this was the best thing they’d seen all festival). For me it was not mind-blowing or soul-searching, but consistently, impressively visually inventive. Swamp Juice certainly shows dedication and delight in puppetry.

www.scamptheatre.com