Live from UNIMA 2008: Review of Bradshaw's Shadows

Read today’s post here. Follow with Flickr pics here.

Richard Bradshaw is perhaps one of the best known Australian shadow puppeteers, and after this
week’s workshop, I wanted to check out his show. It was at the Wardle Room in the Perth Concert Hall, a space which looks to be a conference room for most of the time. The room is longer than it is wider, and the stage is set up along the longer wall, to the right of the entrance. Curtains are pulled around this rather large three-walled screen, with a small white light in front of the screen, and one being placed behind to create the silhouettes.

Bradshaw’s Shadows is a show that he has been doing for over forty years, and is made up of short scenes – with no particular theme or threading storyline – which obviously changes over the years. There’s a reason why this show has been so popular over that time: Bradshaw takes our expectations of a particular scene, or his introduction to a particular scene, and turns it on its head. For instance, one animal hides behind a bush, and we first see a leg appear – a lady’s leg – it moves around for a few seconds, and then the animal walks out from behind the bush. It turns out the leg is actually the head of a large giraffe!

I found myself entranced, not only with Bradshaw’s ability to surprise me – a hard thing for any scriptwriter to do to me – but also with his strange and wonderful designs. In particular, I was transfixed with his transforming fish, whose bodies moved in such ways that created spirals, disappearing patterns, and things that would have reminded someone of perhaps a ‘magic eye’ image.

The audience consisted mainly of adults, although there were about 10-15 very young children as well. Overall there might not have been more than 20-30 people, in a room that could seat at least twice that. The children loved the show, although the adults too were having a good laugh.

Most of the scenes had some form of dialogue, either from the characters themselves, or in terms of vocalised sound effects done by Bradshaw, or as part of a narrative speech. All of the scenes were extremely simple, at least in terms of action or concepts, but most of the shadow puppets themselves were complex.

At one stage, Bradshaw performs a short scene, and then comes to the front of the stage, visible, and explains how the shadow puppet works.

The other day at the workshop, Bradshaw had told us that he used a cylindrical piece of two gels (plastic that is used to ‘colour’ theatrical lights), one blue, one orange, to create a particular lighting effect. He did it in the show today, and it looked fantastic. Once there was an underwater scene, and he must have hung up a couple of pieces of blue gel, which gently wafted under his light backstage; and created a wonderful reflecting water feel to the scene.

Everything was done extremely well in terms of manipulation, except for one thing: A diving tower is used in one scene, and Bradshaw accidentally knocked over the whole puppet. However, he laughed at his mistake, made a quip, and quickly moved on, and soon everyone forgot the whole thing.

Despite this small flaw, the show was brilliant, and if you’re ever near a Bradshaw’s Shadows performance, do take the time to go see it. It’s hilarious, and very eye opening in terms of how to create a performance based on the audience’s perceptions of what happens next, and how to use that to create a magical and fun show.

My vote: (5 UNIMA stars out of 5)