The immensely successful War Horse is a pretty tough act to follow. For their return to the National, South African Handspring puppet company has wisely chosen to tackle a subject on a far smaller scale but performed with the same degree of care and precision which so enhanced their telling of Michael Morpurgo’s war time tale.
From autobiographical anecdotes – his own and those of Handspring founders Adrian Kohler and Basil Jones – writer and director Neil Bartlett has constructed an almost painfully intimate account of a love affair between two men, A and B, spanning nearly seven decades, beginning a quarter of a century in the future and going back to the first chance meeting which shaped their lives.
We see them first in 2036 leaving a Port Elizabeth hospital - B terminally ill, irascible, his emphysema leaving him barely able to breathe; A taking him home for the last time, where memories of their youthful selves (diving, swimming and taking robust health for granted) surface to remind them how it all started back in 1971.
There are four main puppets – a 19 and 85 year old version of each man, plus a faithful canine companion with an insistently loud bark. A quartet of black-suited puppeteers assists Kohler and Jones (who also play A & B in present-day middle-age) with the tender manipulation of these wooden but remarkably expressive creations whose partly exposed muscle, sinew and bone speaks of both the joys and the frailties of the flesh.
Played without an interval, the piece sometimes demands indulgence as Adjoa Andoh (serving as non-judgemental narrator, housekeeper, solicitor and nurse) structures their story. It’s a slow burn and the biographical detail is frustratingly sparse, but the eloquence of the speechless puppets adds layers of poignancy as they face the inevitable.
Cottesloe to 18th November
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