Reviews 2010
Reviews 2010
✭✭✭✭✩
created and directed by Ronnie Burkett
Ronnie Burkett Theatre of Marionettes, Factory Theatre Mainspace, Toronto
September 28-October 31, 2010
Any Ronnie Burkett show is a must-see event for serious theatre-goers. He is, after all, one of Canada’s greatest theatre practitioners, a man who single-handedly extended the range and themes of Western puppetry. Part of the adult appeal of his work is its inherent metatheatricality since he as manipulator is always visible to the audience. Burkett’s past shows found him increasingly interacting with his own creations on stage. His latest piece, Billy Twinkle: Requiem for a Golden Boy from 2008, feels like the culmination of that colloquy of creator and creation.
The autobiographical plot finds Billy Twinkle (the 52-year-old Ronnie Burkett) suffering a mid-life crisis. After performing his marionette variety act on a cruise ship, he is fired for insulting the inattentive audience. On the point of casting himself overboard he is visited by the ghost of his dead mentor, Sid Diamond, in the guise of a hand-puppet. Sid forces Billy to re-enact his life in the form of a puppet play to realize that it is still worth living. Thus we follow Billy’s career from growing up in the Prairies (as did Burkett) to his first interest in puppets and attending puppeteer fairs to having his own show when still a teenager (as did Burkett) to realizing he is gay (like Burkett) and becoming acclaimed as the “golden boy” of modern puppetry. It seems distinctly un-Canadian for a performer to indulge in such self-praise except that here Burkett is simply acknowledging a fact.
The set Burkett has design features a stage within a beautifully ship-shaped stage upon the Factory stage. Burkett takes the metatheatrical to an another level by having the marionettes themselves manipulate other marionettes. The feats he achieves, like the opening marionette strip-tease, are astonishing. The 36 marionettes representing more than 20 characters, some like Billy and Sid at various ages, are works of art in themselves and expressive even when at rest. Burkett debates the nature of art with the sock puppet Sid so convincingly you easily believe he and the glove on his left hand are different people--a point made all the more ironic since they argue whether “God” is in the puppeteer or in the puppets. While the set-up may seem artificial and the ending too cozy, what comes between is an amazing display of Burkett’s art. Billy’s final promise to himself could easily be Burkett’s--that this show represents a “new beginning” for him in exploring the “tempest” inside his mind.
©Christopher Hoile
Note: A version of this review appeared in Eye Weekly 2010-09-29.
Photo: Ronnie Burkett.
2010-09-29
Billy Twinkle: Requiem for a Golden Boy