Read today?s post here. Follow along with Flickr pics here.

Sleeping Beauty enticed me with its media design; a picture of a woman, holding forks on end. The show itself was pitched as a modern take on fairytales, and seems to be set in a restaurant ? or at least that?s how it was told in the media packaging.

The setting all right was restaurant-ish, but at no time does the script or performer suggest it; it just seems to be a bunch of sets and props laid out with no references made to location. That?s ok, because it works with the storyline, but it does make liars out of the publicity people.

? Let?s head back to the start a bit. Sleeping Beauty, performed by Colette Garrigan who is also the writer and director of the show, was created by French Compagnie Akselere. The show was at the Perth Concert Hall, which seats about 200+ people. Unfortunately, today?s Wednesday (Wed. being the day when most theatres seem to be less well attended than other nights), and about 50 people were in the audience. As such, it wasn?t a boisterous audience, but it was a quiet liveliness nevertheless.

The stage, which is a large proscenium, had a table centrestage, which was completely covered in a white cloth, and had various food, bottles, and cutlery items lined along it. Stage right of the table were a small set of stairs, that led up to the table itself. Stage left was a small table, and in front of that, a set of tripods with something on top ? it was covered by a white cloth, so you couldn?t see what it was straight away. Stage right was another small table, in front of which was a large lamp, with lampshade. And right up the back was large piece of grayish cloth, about the width of the table, but from floor to lighting rig in height.

I should mention a couple of other technical things: costume was simple. A black short dress, with black heels. Lighting was open white wash, with a backlight for silhouetting from behind the grey cloth, and a light in the front for creating shadows onstage. The lighting design was fairly basic, which wasn?t bad, it?s just that I was so bored I started staring at the lights ? never a good sign! Sound design for the most part was sound effects vocalised live onstage by Garrigan, but also included some interesting music from overlaid tracks of vocalised beats.

The storyline itself is a take on the ?woman question? (sorry, I?ve been reading Dostoyevsky), that is to say, it?s a narrative on how modern female life is nowhere near a princess? life in a fairytale. It?s laden with fairytale references and lines, which became predictable after a while. This theme is told by the use of a first person description of a young woman?s life from birth to death.

Garrigan enters the theatre from the audience doorway, and proceeds to introduce the fairytale themes with an overdramatised, very enunciated voice. I immediately rolled my eyes.

The puppetry itself is a combination of shadow puppetry and object play ? the bottles and items on the table quickly turn into the silhouette of a fairytale castle, which I really liked. Unfortunately, as mentioned above, the puppets were incidental, and I was at a complete loss when the Garrigan?s character introduced us to some Barbie and Ken dolls ? hidden under that stage left tripod thing ? which neither moved nor did anything of interest. They just seemed to be there. The use of object play and shadows was fascinating at points, but it was nothing remarkable. The lamp quickly turns into a small playset, with miniature figures (rod puppets) set into the lampshade, but were really too small for the venue to be seen well from the back, where I was. The end combined shadow puppetry and a large fern or plant of some kind, to create an eerie and mysterious image of leaves and vines; but the light source was held too close and for some odd reason you could see the circle of the lightbulb (get a torch out at home at night and hold it very close to the wall. You will see the pinprick of the lightbulb, plus a circular beam around it), which was very distracting to me. For the most part though, the manipulation of the puppets was extremely well done, and I think if it wasn?t, I would have walked out of the show; something I?ve never done before!

My issues with this show actually have less to do with the puppets, and more to do with the acting. Although the script itself was too domestic for my tastes (domestic = a show you could see anywhere in the world in any theatre at any time), it was the performance of Garrigan that bothered me. I found myself completely disinterested in the character and the story, and I quickly worked out why.

The overdramatisation of the monologue ? which was like a bad version of Allan Bennett’s Talking Heads series ? made it extremely hard for me to connect emotionally with Garrigan?s character. The moments when she pulled back from her heightened non-naturalism, and went into natural, relaxed speech, she suddenly had me interested. But then she?d slip back into OTT (over the top) and I lost interest again. Everything was way too rehearsed, so none of it felt at all ?like the first time? it was being performed; Garrigan even had a little audience interaction, and those lines failed miserably because they didn?t sound as if she were talking to a person in the audience, but simply standing in front of the mirror in her rehearsal studio. The whole character was so overdramatised it was one dimensional, and I couldn?t sympathise with the character or her situation in life.

It occurred to me on the way back to the hotel that this show makes a perfect example of why people use puppets. In this case, I felt as if the puppets were an afterthought, an endeavour to enhance the script. But this didn?t work for me, and I found it trite. Oh, the puppetry was well done, but it was incidental to the storyline, and the show could have been produced just as well, or badly, without it. So all you hopeful puppet people out there, I implore you to ask this question of your show: does adding puppets enhance or detract from the script? If it does neither, that doesn?t mean you should keep the puppets. It means that there?s no reason for them, and therefore you probably could do the show just as well without puppets.

In comparison to Diva, I realised that puppetry can be more effective without using dialogue, because it allows the story and the characters to be more focused and clear when being communicated by the performers.

My last comment is this: what do I know? As I sat there being completely bored, I looked around at the small audience, and realised that none of them had coughed or fidgeted the whole time. They may have been rather quiet, but the audience was engrossed, and you know when an actor has an audience in the palm of their hand. And Garrigan had this audience. At the end of the show, Garrigan got three curtain calls.

Maybe it?s just me, but my vote: (2 UNIMA stars out of 5)

Tomorrow, a workshop with Gary Friedman, and if I’m up to it, a trip to the Transit Lounge. UPDATE: Read the next post here.