Ronnie Burkett showed his genius from the very beginning of his career 25 years ago. He rose to fame based on his adult marionette shows. He is the lone actor of all the voices and the sole manipulator of the puppets. His marionettes look like miniature real people wearing everyday clothes. He deals with mature themes. Burkett does not put on shows for children.
His newest marionette play, Penny Plain, at Factory Theatre is perhaps his darkest to date. The show begins with an assault of voice-over newscasts. It is the Apocalypse. A virus is wiping out millions of people worldwide, while global warming is causing mayhem in the environment. Burkett’s concentration is on how people are facing their final days on earth.
Penny Plain, an elderly woman, runs a boarding house, and her boarders are the main characters. The play inhabits the world of magic realism as Burkett builds his story around the human condition, particularly people’s proclivity for clinging to illusions. As the Last Days present themselves, human behaviour becomes more erratic.
Miss Plain is blind, and we learn that she lost her sight when her beloved dog was killed by her father when she was a young girl. She pretended that she was Dorothy, and her dog Big Boy was Toto. The Wizard of Oz, and its escape into fantasy theme, is an underlying metaphor of the play.
Miss Plain is able to have conversations with her dog Geoffrey, who leaves his mistress to try living as a human. Geoffrey is replaced by Tuppence, a little girl pretending to be a dog. Other characters include Jubilee Karloff, a spinster editor with a demanding mother, the realistic little boy Oliver, and a cross-dressing banker. Even Gepetto and Pinocchio are part of the character mix, albeit, modernized and assimilated.
A perfect example of Burkett’s doleful musings is the woman who wants a child of her own. She approaches Gepetto and asks him to make her a puppet that will become a human child, just a Pinocchio did. Gepetto produces a monster made of plastic so it will last forever, with a green head from a detergent bottle, a body from a ketchup bottle, and limbs from plastic cutlery. This is just one of the shocking twists and turns Burkett takes in his story.
What makes this particular play intriguing is that Burkett is more in the shadows than ever before. He confines himself to an upper gallery while most of the action takes place on the stage level, and Kevin Humphrey’s lighting ensures that divide. As a result, we watch the puppets as if they were actual actors on a stage. Burkett’s skill is manifested in the clever manipulation of the marionettes, including their emotional levels, and the clarity in the differentiation of the voices. Once again, John Alcorn has devised a sound score that suits the action like hand to glove, including a beautiful and mournful passage of vocalise that acts as the segue between scenes.
The story is fantastical and dark. If this were a play performed by actors, perhaps, Burkett’s wild flights of fancy might not be as readily acceptable. But because the characters are portrayed by marionettes, the audience is more willing to go along with Burkett and his dystopian view of life. Nonetheless, whatever one feels about the relative merits of the apocalyptic plot, there is no denying Burkett’s genius as a puppeteer and visionary.
Penny Plain, created and performed by Ronnie Burkett Theatre of Marionettes, Factory Theatre Mainspace, Jan. 2 to Mar. 4.