The third Beverley Puppet Festival

A Celebration of English Puppet Theatre!

A review of the third Beverley Puppet Festival 4 – 6 July 2008

By Drew Colby

I have just returned from an outstanding couple of days in the beautiful Yorkshire town of Beverley, where I attended (and performed at) the third Beverley Puppet Festival.
On offer were shows by seventeen companies from all over England. Of the seventeen companies, eight were from Yorkshire. Good to see a very committed puppet presence in that county.

Beverley is an ideal town in which to stage a puppet festival. All of the venues are within walking distance, but in addition, the town is full of little creatures!

A visit to Beverley minster revealed hundreds of stone and wood beasties which are an inspiration to this puppeteer. Medieval characters played the instruments of the day; an animal with cloven hooves, a deer’s body and an impish face grins out at you. Elsewhere in the town a cast-iron shoe-scraper boasted a demure faced lady.
I even found a very jolly little face on a curb - see picture above - that made me think of the gingerbread man.

So it is no wonder that Indigo Moon (the resident puppet company in Beverley and organisers of the festival) took inspiration for their show “Alice and the White Rabbit” from the carvings and misericords of St Mary’s church in Beverley.

On the lintels of one of the doors is carved a rabbit which is said to have inspired Lewis Carroll’s white rabbit in “Alice in Wonderland.” In addition, around one of the entrances to the church there is a series of cat-like faces which must have influenced the creation of the Cheshire cat. Indigo Moon’s performance was a visual feast, exploring various shadow techniques, which included the use of shadows over filmed sequences (filmed in St Mary’s) and the shadow characters were based largely on the carvings in the church. The show was replete with stunning visual imagery, which was explored verbally by the performer (Anna Ingleby) to set up a dialogue with the audience, a dynamic which was playful and worked well to hold the interest of the children.

Indeed, it was great to see so much work in the festival which not only played with conventional puppet forms in interesting and relevant ways, but also had a strong text base, be it narration or dialogue. Animated Objects presented an adult performance “The Canterbury Tales” which combined object theatre, puppetry and storytelling. The performer, Lee Threadgold, was an excellent storyteller, and I particularly enjoyed the story of the three young men who decide to reckon with Death. Very simply staged with two gargoyle-like muppet faces, this tale had a real sense of drama.

Elsewhere, the two chicken puppets for the story of Chanticleer and Pertolet were cleverly made out of robust rubber gloves, with tails made out of brushes. The miller’s tale, told with simple object theatre, nicely tackled the sex in the story by having a goblet and a small jug going at it hammer and tongs (if you’ll pardon the expression) under a scarf!

Sea Legs performed “The Selfish Giant” using rod puppets, live and recorded music and both narrative and dialogue. This was a lovely performance, and Rob Ashman (the performer) had a gentle style of narrative which, aside from working well with Oscar Wilde’s touching story, completely won over the audience. Some lovely puppetry here- the little children puppets were very simple, each with one rod in the back, and loose arms and legs which moved spontaneously, really bringing the puppets to life (they did particularly fantastic cartwheels). I liked the simplicity of this show. All of the winter characters (snow, frost, wind and hail) created a delightful diversion and change of pace, and the end of the show, with the placing of the apple blossoms on the dead giant was at once ritualistic and moving.

I managed to see a small bit of one of the outdoor performances, “Robin Hood” by No Strings, which was a simple glove-puppet performance in a puppet theatre attached to the puppeteer. I gather Alan (the performer) has been doing this play as long as “The Mousetrap” and it was witty and perfect. His banter with the audience was particularly noteworthy. At one point, the Sheriff of Nottingham states that Robin Hood is safely banged up in his dungeon, whereupon the audience (who have just witnessed Robin’s escape) replied “Oh no he isn’t.” Sharp as a razor, the Sheriff turned to the audience and said “I’m not Mr. Punch, you know!” I loved the puppet faces, especially the friar, who was reminiscent of some of the carved faces I had seen in the minster the day before.

Audience attendance at the festival was very good. My three performances (one of “The Elves and the Shoemaker” and two of “Little Red Riding Hood”) sold out, and the audience response was warm. A real sense of enjoyment from both sides!

One of the great ideas of the festival was to have a party tent in which puppeteers and members of the public could hang-out, eat and drink and watch some short extracts from some of the shows. One such extract was “Dr. Slythe” by Puppetcraft. An excellent sense of teamwork from this company, which used live music and sounds, and some delightful and hilarious puppets made out of odds and ends of metal. They performed a short circus act to the great enjoyment of the audience. Dr Slythe himself, a gangly and engaging bunraku-style puppet performed some hilarious and silly magic which really got the crowd going. I wish I could have stayed to see Puppetcraft’s “Tin Forest” but the journey from Yorkshire to London is long, and our cat was happy to see us back!

I have to say a big thank you to the festival organisers. It is not easy pulling this sort of event together, but this festival is something quite unique and has some very special performance spaces; the mixture of performances was a real showcase of the diversity and quality of puppetry going on in this country.

Apologies to all of the puppeteers and companies not mentioned here, as the standard of work was so high I could have written a book (and also with my own performance commitments it was not possible to see all of the shows, much as I would have liked to!). I also have to say thank you to the puppeteers who came to see my shows and gave me such wonderful feedback!

What a great bunch of people to spend a weekend with, and three cheers for Anna Ingleby, the Beverley Festival, and the very healthy state of English puppetry!