Performed in the Ferst Centre by IBEX Puppetry, Panther & Crane is a piece taking the all-too-familiar path of discussing the affect us humans are having on the earth. The story follows a young crane, who is born to a lab-raised mother. Humans encroach on the natural environment, eventually killing the mother, the young crane eventually learns to fly and gains freedom. The whole thing is spun in amongst text about the stability of nature before we came along (they’ve obviously never looked at what a supernova does ), along with the four elements: fire, earth, wind and water.

The set is sparse, using the main stage area and not the apron (I’ll get to this more in a second), with a few metal trusses lined upstage. A scrim is upstage, with random imagery (combinations of images related to the scenes, like water flowing, or neon lines for the more industrial scenes) We see three weird sculptural pieces, a la canvas-covered parade puppets, with one of them clearly a crocodile’s head. The story introduces a range of rod puppets (again, more in a second), flying rod puppets, and object theatre. The puppeteers are costumed in a haphazard combination of colours and materials, mostly earthly colours, and in jump suit style (yeah, it sounds weird but it worked).

The easiest way I can describe this performance is thus: it was like someone took the puppets from The Lion King, slightly reworked them, and handed them over to a bunch of college students who are also ecological activists. There were a number of times were I felt that the performers were forgetting to act: those who moved puppets on and offstage, but didn’t actually operate them, acted as if they were thinking, "Ok, and now I go onstage. And now I move the puppet. And now I go offstage…" The puppeteer who worked the crocodile head often missed the mark on lip-synching with (what I’m guessing was) pre-recorded vocals. Many times the puppeteers would wander into the apron, which would have been fine if it had been lit even remotely well enough to be seen. I have no idea why they didn’t put in some extra FOH lighting to cover the apron (it may have been that they shared the rig with the previous show, but then I still don’t get why they couldn’t have put in some extra lighting). 

Lighting itself was an odd mix of colours; pinks and blues, dim but also a general wash of it. The music was also a mix of earthly noises, industrial noises and atmospheric soundscapes.

Redemption was not achieved by the puppet design, as good as all the puppets looked. As mentioned above, they were very similar to The Lion King puppets. The cranes, panther and fish were all in the style as the cheetah in TLK; puppets worked from rods attached at the top of the body/head. Flying objects - whether they be bird, fire, air, whatever - were materials placed high up on a long extending pole. The object theatre involved humans carrying dump trucks (it took me almost all of the scene they were in to figure out what they were, not because they were difficult to see, but because the actions of the performers weren’t clear at all). 

The plotline itself was enough to make me roll my eyes several times over; there was nothing new or interesting about an already well-trodden path down the road of "nature=good, humans=bad" scripts. They didn’t push any boundaries, and hence me comparing them to a student performance.

Furthermore, I constantly had an image in my head of my good friend Jeany, who would have absolutely hated the show. This seems to be one of those performances where I knew as soon as it had finished that despite me thinking badly of it, it would be well-received by the rest of the audience. And it was. Maybe it’s an American thing, but this show has actually won an award. 

As I walked back to my room, another festival-attendee asked me what I thought of the show. I said it wasn’t my thing, and she agreed. So at least it’s not all me. I give this unimaginative a rating (I’d mark it lower but for the decent building/design of the puppets themselves):