Yet another award-winning show I don’t get. This is a retelling of the Cinderella story, putting it in the middle of ‘Muddy York’, otherwise (previously) known as Toronto. Performed by Puppetmongers Theatre, the puppets were predominantly rod (sort of a Sicilian marionette actually, with a rod at the top of the head for the main characters), but also included object theatre and some odd objects (more below).

The set design is a booth, curtained off at the front (and along the top), with a small curtain hiding the central playing area. Unfortunately, this is only one of a myriad of scene changes, and it seems every five minutes a curtain, table, object, or other item would be moved, rotated or removed. Along with the puppets, this made for one very busy show, and ultimately is the greatest downfall of this performance.

The vocals on this play were also a let down - David Powell, one of the puppeteers, had a very low volume on his microphone. Numerous times, he couldn’t be heard, so much so that on about 6 times I could hear someone in the audience repeat what he said for someone else who’d missed it. 

The puppets themselves are nicely made, although not really in a style I personally enjoy. My favourite puppets: some object theatre done using table settings, all about the Titanic and a survivor being rescued which was incredibly witty; a lazy-susan style set of dancing puppets for the ballroom scenes; and a plastic draw-bag style pumpkin carriage. 

The manipulation swung from good, to decent, to "And now I walk off the stage and forget that I was just performing"… You know, people always tell actors to not drop the character as soon as you go to make your exit, but to keep it until you are no longer in sight. The puppeteers in this show dropped the character as soon as they moved. Not only that, but I didn’t get the sense that there was any energy in the performance - understable seeing as they’d just performed the show for the Red group (remember, the festival attendees are split into two groups when seeing afternoon shows) - however, if the other groups could handle it, why not them?

The script was fine, although perhaps a little long, but combining it with a chaotic array of set pieces and puppets, a lack of good vocalisation, and less-than-good manipulation, and you get one pretty bad show. I give it a rating of (saved from 1/6 by the Titanic scene):