This show is a rare non-American one, but rather from Spain. Produced by Los Titiriteros de Binefar, this is yet another take on the "humans destroying the earth" theme. (Seriously, I think people are stuck in a Ferngully: The Last Rainforest mindset. I seriously hope scientists are more innovative than the people who keep writing the whole "nature playing along happily until bad humans come to knock it down with bulldozers and then what’s left of nature returns to free life and winning the day" thing.)

That actually pretty much sums up the storyline, except for one thing: it’s at least half an hour before you even get a slight bit of a hint of a plot. That’s not a good thing by the way, although I usually like not seeing the plotline coming, in this case it was an aimlessness that makes this play difficult to follow/enjoy. Most of this show is done without words, but rather through noises appropriate to the characters - bird noises, children’s giggles, etc - and the occasional line in English and quite a few in Spanish. I’m sure the Americans understood more of it than I did, seeing as how Spanish is learned more than it is in Australia (we tend to learn Asian languages instead, particularly Japanese). 

The show uses a combination of music, the vocalisations, and the actions of the puppets to tell the story; not that there was much of one. When it was finally ‘revealed’, I rolled my eyes. Because from that moment on, I knew exactly how the show would progress.

The puppets - operated by two people - are an odd collection of used items, from plastic bottles to cardboard boxes, old wheels and rakes, from an old witches’ hat (um, an orange cone, to you non-Aussies)… well, anything junk related. Whilst that could put you off, it was actually all put together to create novel designs. On some occasion I was thinking, "wtf?", but for the most part I enjoyed the creativity that went into attaching random junk together and still getting both a clear character and a functional puppet from them. This, and shining a torch onto a small dump-truck toy to create scary and overbearing shadows on the walls of the theatre, is the only part of this show that could even remotely be called a positive quality.

The set design consists of two large boxes either side of the stage, whilst centre stage is a frame which holds up a piece of rectangular cloth. The stage is lit using warm downlights, and some groundrow lights in red, green and blue; the green had some gobos which were of leaves and flowers. Unfortunately, we also had the same problem as yesterday, in that downstage simply wasn’t lit from front of house. Naturally, the performers just had to stand downstage repeatedly, and all of the action that occured there was not visible. This also occured when they flew bird rod puppets over a centre downstage light (pointed straight up to the ceiling from the stage floor), and managed to light the rod, but not the puppets which were obviously flying in a wider circle than the diameter of the rod. (What is it about actors that they never stand in the light? It seems that all the way through uni and doing pro shows, actors never get the right spot)

The puppet manipulation was terrible, there was just so much movement and music - although the music was excellent, a combination of what I would guess is Brazilian, and a chaotic and eerie soundscape - that none of it seemed to matter. The puppets were brought out, moved about a bit (I mean that quite literally, there was very little style or substance to the choreography other than, let’s move that there, and that there) and then put backstage. 

This show was so boring, I almost fell asleep, and indeed started watching the lights - never a good sign - and the live keyboardist instead. This again is another award-winning company which I totally don’t get, and they received a standing ovation from the audience - which I also don’t get. The highlight was when the keyboardist got a louder applause than the puppeteers. That sums it up completely for me. I give this show (redeemed from a rating of one only by the innovative use of recycled objects):