The magical puppet bargistas return to Richmond riverside, but Richard Davies is underwhelmed by their performance of ‘Spirit’...
OUR VERDICT
★★
I always look forward to visiting the Puppet Barge theatre at their annual summer season on Richmond riverside. For first-timers especially, it is a truly magical experience, stepping onto the old Thames lighter that has been so cleverly converted into a cosy puppet theatre, complete with tiered seating. As you take your seat, it’s hard not to feel you are being watched by all the sleeping marionettes that hang from the walls, collected by the founders Gren and Juliet Middleton on their world travels. (Pupaphobes be warned, this is not the place for you!)
Some years ago, I had the privilege to watch their production of ‘The Ancient Mariner’, an experience so wonderful that I can still hear and picture it vividly in my mind. Since then, I have always admired the company’s bold, experimental approach as they challenge the boundaries of storytelling and puppetry whilst continuing a medieval tradition of wandering players.
‘Spirit’ is one of two productions currently in performance. It is based on a soundtrack created by Susan Beattie back in 2001 of interviews with people who have no religious affiliation talking about ‘the meaning of life’. According to the programme notes, Spirit “takes the audience on a journey of ordinary people’s otherworldly experiences.”
The main problem with hearing ‘ordinary voices’ is that their thoughts and ideas are well, how can I put it, rather ordinary. The interviewees told us about their floating out of the body dreams (yawn), opiate-induced hallucinations after a traumatic injury (double yawn), being visited by the spirit of a close friend and then learning they are dead (treble yawn).
The puppeteers did their best to bring these stories to life and you can only marvel at their mastery of the craft in its many forms. But in the end, they were defeated by the dullness of the material. I was also slightly distracted by the fact that the main puppet character resembled a misshapen root vegetable.
The only highlight for me was a short film about an extraordinary Tibetan monk called Yeshi Dhonden who was able to diagnose people with the accuracy of modern medicine by simply palpating their pulse and sniffing a whisked urine sample. This was truly fascinating, although I wasn’t quite sure how it fitted with the rest of the show.
If you are hoping for a ‘feel-good factor’, I am afraid that Spirit had the opposite effect on me. Although not a religious person, I found it profoundly depressing to think that the decline of organized religion has left people with a spiritual vacuum that is now being filled with clichés.
