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CALGARY HERALD
A chance to inhabit Pinocchio’s funny world.
by Bob Clark
Sunday December 5 2004
REVIEW
Pinocchio, we are told near the beginning of the show which premiered Friday at the Martha Cohen Theatre, “is the story…of a log.”
Some log.
And, as we quickly learn – some story.
From the moment Geppetto carries home the stump to make into a puppet, through the end of the Old Trout Puppet Workshop adaptation of the famous Collodi tale when the puppet finally becomes a boy – “How strange to be a puppet, how curious to be real,” the Blue Fairy says, watching Pinocchio set out on his new life – we are caught up in an inspired, strange and very funny world that only the Trouts could create.
Using their characteristically wide range of sophisticated modern puppet techniques, as well as props and a set design which seem to come straight out of the 19th century (the set under-goes a breathtakingly mechanical transformation late in the play), the five members of the collective – Peter Balkwill, Bobby Hall, Steve Kenderes, Judd Palmer and Stephen Pearce, with concept input from director Vanessa Porteous – take their mischievous, but lovable, gibberish-talking little wooden head puppet though ingeniously staged adventures that provoke laughter as much as a sense of wonder among audience members, adults and kids alike.
And whenever the threads of what is essentially a stern, but affectionately told, morality fable about the potentially gothic perils of cutting strings become too much perhaps for some young ears to follow, there’s always something different to watch – robbers and assassins, for example; or a frightening storm, complete with thundersheet and wind-machine; a talking cricket that Pinocchio would sooner be without; a kangaroo court (an audience favourite); a Field of Miracles planted especially to relieve our poor puppet of the money given for his education; a Punch and Judy sideshow; a mad knight whose behaviour gets the better of him, courtesy of his ass; or a miraculous escape…by telling fib after fib after fib.
(Revealing anything of just about everything in Pinocchio runs the risk of spoiling the show’s trove of visual and comic delight for those who haven’t yet seen it.)
Add the spirited contributions of Doug McKeag and Jocelyn Ahlf, as Geppetto and the Blue Fairy respectively; the fully-integrated sound effects and musical accompaniment provided by composers/performers David Rhymer and Jonathan Lewis; Brian Pincott’s dramatically heightened lighting design; the bright, indefinitely olden days period costumes by Jen Gareau – and you have a show that appeals to the best of the child in all of us.
FAST FORWARD WEEKLY
Definitely not Disney
The Old Trout Puppet Workshop builds its Pinocchio out of dark wood
by Martin Morrow
Thursday December 9 2004
REVIEW
If Walt Disney eviscerated fairy tales, the Old Trouts stuff the guts back in.
The Old Trout Puppet Workshop’s dark new version of Pinocchio for Alberta Theater Projects restores the macabre innards of the original Carlo Collodi story, while at the same time boiling it down to its most basic mythic elements, as is this troupe’s wont.
Collodi’s episodic children’s novel may be a variant on the parable of the prodigal son, but Collodi dressed it up with slapstick humour and picaresque adventures that kids still enjoy. Scraps of that colourful garb remain in this adaptation (by the Trouts in collaboration with director Vanessa Porteous), but its suggested symbolism is left clearly exposed. Geppetto, the puppet’s maker, is his father; the ethereal Blue Fairy is his mother figure (and, in a real Freudian nightmare, dies because Pinocchio abandons her); and Pinocchio himself is the imperfect soul who is more than mere senseless marionette, but must embark on a quest of self-discovery in order to transcend his wooden origins and become a real boy. Joseph Campbell would’ve love this show.
Happily, for those either too young or too old to care about symbol and allegory, the Trouts have also crafted a clever and imaginative entertainment, involving puppets of all sizes, human actors, a set like a giant pop-up book, old-fashioned theatrical effects and a live score.
The Trouts’ Pinocchio, sporting one of their trademark trout-pout faces and a Punch-style fool’s cap, is less of a lively scapegrace and more of a sad-looking, creaky-voiced little fellow who speaks in a ragú of Italian and gibberish, spiced with the odd English word. (And it’s an odd little conceipt – the other characters only speak English.) If Collodi’s Pinocchio was a prey to temptation, the Trout’ character is more sinned against than sinning. When he is fleeced by the two cunning thieves (who appear here, not as a fox and cat, but as a pair of bowler-hatted old men in a Beckettian landscape), you actually fell sorry for the poor little guy’s eager naiveté.
The Trouts and Porteous take a few other liberties with the book, but stick close to the original plot and restore some of the bitter flavour that Walt’s gang sugar-coated (e.g., there’s no sage cricket sidekick for this Pinocchio who, like Collodi’s, applies a hammer to his annoying insect "conscience” right off the top).
Actor-singers Doug McKeag and Jocelyn Ahlf are the token human stars in the Trouts’ puppet cast, the former as a gentle, white-bearded Geppetto who looks like one of Tolkien’s Middle-earth dwellers, the latter as an operatic Blue Fairy who resembles Elizabeth I. (Yes, the fairy is played by an Ahlf.) They are joined by the five Trout men – Peter Balkwill, Bobby Hall, Steve Kenderes, Judd Palmer and Stephen Pearce – as the eponymous hero and a slew of other puppets, including marionette and hand versions as well as those signature helmet puppets they wear on their heads. The grave gorilla magistrate and his chattering monkey colleagues who preside over Pinocchio’s trial are a particular hit (the court’s bailiff is a mastiff), while the whale that swallows Geppetto and Pinocchio could have swum straight off the sketchpad of Monty Python’s Terry Gilliam. And, in another whiff of symbolism (which recalls the Trouts’ previous show, the adult Last Supper of Antonin Carême)’ Fire-eater, the irascible puppetmaster appears as an Old Testament Jehovah.
Unlike their adult shows, Pinocchio has dialogue – making it more conventional, perhaps, but also comprehensible – and jettisons the complex soundscape in favour of accompanying mood music composed and played by David Rhymer (piano) and Jonathan Lewis (violin and wood winds), with Trout Balkwill continually scurrying between stage and pit to supply some percussion.
ATP director Porteous, meanwhile, supplies the pacing that was lacking in Antonin Carême. And the company’s Martha Cohen stage has allowed the Trouts to spread out and go for a deluxe set design, dominated by two rows of wooden Gothic arches crowned by clouds, which serve as forest and town and in a touch of theatre magic, are finally set in rhythmic motion to indicate the ribcage of the breathing whale.
Not everything in this production works, but the Trouts have a way of getting back to the dark, primeval roots of fairy tales that’s a welcome change from the Disney versions.
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