Review: As I Lay Dying

As I Lay Dying was presented by Haverty Marionettes, also in the Ferst Centre of the Arts. Once Mallory Lewis (see the related posts, linked at the bottom of this post) got off stage, the black curtains were pulled aside to reveal a Gypsy caravan facade, with a small band set up in front of it. The caravan had three white circles along the top, a small red curtain (obviously for a small ‘booth’ or window where puppets perform) in the middle of the caravan’s side, and either side of the curtain, six portraits of people. These portraits are labelled; obviously the character names.

My whole experience of the show can be summed up as this: if you have portraits and names of your characters on the front of your set (whether for kids or adults), that’s probably a good sign that your show is too confusing to follow and so you’ve put caricatures up to aid the audience in understanding it.

I’m still so confused as to what the show is about, I am now going to summarise the plot for you from my festival program…. Actually, no I’m not, because there’s no summary in the program. The performance is based on William Faulkner’s book of the same name, that’s all it says. I did work out some of it: there’s a dying woman, and we watch the fallout of her dying/death on the family. It’s basically a southern American (as in USA south) tale, back in the days when horse and carts were used. From there, I know one of the kids (the ‘dumb’ one) ends up in a zoo - I think, either that or an asylum - the daughter gets pregnant and wants an abortion, and one guy makes the coffin outside the dying woman’s house. If you think that’s a summary of the plotline, you’d be wrong.

The text of the play is spoken rather than performed, and there’s so much of it that it’s very hard to keep up. Combine this with an overpowering - good, but overpowering - musical accompaniment from two band members (and what looked like about 20 different instruments), and lots and lots of puppet objects, the whole thing is in great need of an editor. The band competes so much with the text that I wondered if the band was necessary at all. Despite this, the band played excellently, and provided a complementary atmosphere to the oddball, dark storyline.

It probably wouldn’t have made much of a difference, seeing as how the text of the show was incomprehensible.

The puppets were good though, and I could forgive them for all of the above if they had also been pared back. Every idea they had seemed to go into the show, from black and white (and in a few cases, coloured) shadow puppets appearing in those white circles; to pop up and out puppets that appear from behind the portraits; from Sicilian marionettes and human performers; to rolling rod puppets with targets on them and a moving mouth; from weird lighting effects to small object puppetry that has no meaning whatsoever. (See their site for some pics, and you’ll see what I mean)

The manipulation of the puppets was exceptional, with so many things to move and do, the four puppeteers work fast and well; I just wished they’d also added in some actual emotion and pacing into their speaking of the text. I guess compacting a novel into a play is tough, but if other people can adapt books into plays and movies and have them make sense, why not for this?

Lighting worked well, with tight profile beams to illuminate important areas of the caravan/stage as they were used. I honestly don’t remember much about the lighting, so I guess it must have been good.

After the show, I was chatting with @staceyrebecca and another festival goer, and she said she loved it, he said he hated it (in fact, he mentioned much of the same things that I had thought). This show gets the following rating from me - it was only barely saved by the decent puppet manipulation and puppet design (that is, the puppets looked good):