Penny Plain: Burkett tackles the apocalypse as his legendary boarding house becomes a haven away from homophobic, anti-semitic, racists and intolerant nasties of all kinds
Ronnie Burkett and Ms Penny Plain.
Ronnie Burkett’s puppet vision of the world has evolved enormously since it first began 25 years ago. One of his earlier works, Awful Manors (1990), the first of his performances we saw at the NAC, and that shocked a lot of people, revealed a finely crafted, campy, extremely naughty activist puppet family raging against racism, homophobia, anti-Semitism and intolerance of all kinds. Feeding off serious literary and theatrical erudition, his work was, and still is, a completely new phenomenon on the theatrical scene.
Penny Plain shows to what extent the stage vision and puppet manipulation have grown immensely whereas the textual part of the show seems to be having problems. Still focussed on controversial current debates, this marionette theatre, is now tackling the destruction of our planet, suggesting that a new world order is in the making. Burkett has now shown us his own personal cosmogony which is an intriguing step in a new direction.
Penny Plain opens in the middle of the Apocalypse, and a running commentary by voices of the local media. The show illustrates what happens to a group of individuals caught in Miss Plain’s boarding house which has become a haven of peace and quiet, a contemporary garden of Eden. In this “paradise”, a real Eve is searching for a baby, and “eccentrics” of all definitions, arrive to find refuge from the wars, pandemics, riots and killing that are raging around them. This special Eden is painted as a beautiful Art Deco setting, where puppeteer Burkett, standing in the dark on the upper level, moves about in silence like an ominous shadow, surveying this new and strange dynamics of uncanny human relations.
It all opens as the alpha male dog Geoffrey, declares he wants his freedom from the bondage of blind Miss Penny Plain. This sweet blind old thing has always wanted to be surrounded by civilized beings that sip tea and eat biscuits like well brought up people. Those around her are not necessarily the model of her kind of civilisation but luckily, Geoffrey, her doggy companion, has always repressed his doggy instincts and acted in the civilised human manner that was expected of him. However something has changed. The plague (an artaudian image that works perfectly here) and all the disasters it has set off, are radically changing human relations in the world. Geoffrey succumbs to his deep doggy needs, escapes from this human Garden of Eden and sets off for the first time in his life to experience the world.
However, Miss Plain is perhaps no longer the human being she thinks she is. Her sense of smell has developed to a curious point where we might say her nose is closer to Geoffrey’s than to anyone of her own species. She still seeks companionship and as the candidates line up to be interviewed for the position that Geoffrey has abandoned, more ambiguous and hilarious animal/human behaviours come to light.
Miss Plain eventually settles on the young blond Miss Tuppence who convinces herself and her employer that she really is a dog and so she fits into Plain’s obsessive need for the presence of a dog that goes way beyond cuddley companionship. The evening continues as we meet the whole cast of puppet characters who come and go in that house, a microcosm of the world where something strange is happening to people’s behaviour. Miss Plain’s blindness is not a tragedy because she doesn’t need to see. She cultivates her new Garden of Eden, a world better suited to her new powers of smell: new species of plants, beautiful smelling grass and flowers, she does not notice the transformations of the other humans taking place around her.
The traditional old ladies, cross dressers and sweet little children of this puppet world are still here but they seem to be “different” from those of the past, And then completely new beings come into view. Humans exhibiting roaring and blood-thirsty killer instincts, people who act like animals in all sorts of ways that stimulate the imagination! Taboos of human civilisation are breaking down. The birth of a baby that can never be transformed into a human being the way Pinocchio was (His maker is that same Geppetto ) is the pivotal point in this vision of a nature that is producing a brand new interspecies. “Nature is changing” is Burkett’s final message and the way he shows it happening is witty, playful, cruel and even disturbing because one senses that he might even be close to the truth!
The puppets are still all fascinating and beautiful creatures that move and react as real living beings. Their manipulation is even more delicate than before and gives uncanny life to those tiny creatures who fly on and off stage on the end of a nearly invisibles string, then disappear in the shadows behind the set. The musical accompaniment is well chosen and adds much to the atmosphere.
However, it was not difficult to see that the narrative sometimes got lost in a needless show of puppet virtuosity. Several characters came on only because they were flamboyant show pieces. Often I wondered where the show was going because it seemed to stagnate as it focussed on various creatures such as the nasty old mother in the wheel chair repeatedly screaming for her killer daughter to come and help her relieve herself as a dog might, which is logical if you think you are a dog but the scatology of the moment sent a wave of silence into the audience. The idea of her character is wild but she kept rolling in for cheap laughs that did not contribute much to the clever movement of the play as a whole.
Some weeding out of characters and tightening up of their integration into the whole structure of the play might be considered. It did all come together beautifully at the very end however but one felt not quite as satisfied as one might have been . There is a sense that the artist is overindulging himself in the pleasure of playing god with his own little people but that in spite of the ultimate power of their master , the little people have actually taken over the show! What could be more disturbing than that?
Still an excellent experience that should be seen because it is part of a whole body of important work that has defined a certain current of Canadian Theatre internationally in the last few years. Penny Plain continues until April 1, at the National Arts Centre. Show at 7h30.
Penny Plain
Ronnie Burkett at the NAC
Created and performed by Ronnie Burkett
Music and sound design by John Alcorn
Lighting design by Kevin Humphrey
A Production of the Ronnie Burkett Theatre of Marionettes