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Regional Reviews: Washington, D.C. Famous Puppet Death Scenes Also see Susan's review of The Tempest
The premise of the show is that Nathanial Tweak, himself a puppet, has spent his life curating the greatest death scenes in the history of puppet theater. Through the actions of these intricately carved blocks of wood, he says, viewers can come to terms with the fact that "we are all dying" and accept the many moods of death. (His remarks follow the first of several scenes from "The Feverish Heart by Nordo Frot," in which the bald head of a small, stocky puppet is crushed by a large fist at the end of a long arm.) Assisted by Mike Rinaldi's indispensable sound design, which incorporates both music and narration in several languages, the show trips from one genre to the next. Highlights include an existential German children's show, a Gothic tragedy where the number of bodies keeps piling up, a gentle story set on a toy farm beset by life-size demonic children, "the winds of fate" represented by a bellows, and the revelation that a butterfly is not as benign as one might think. And then there's the future society where everyone looks like Johnny Depp ... but that's another story. Most of the scenes take place in the windows of a traditional puppet theater, but others move into the foreground: one consists of a sequence of pages from an oversized book, while the moving parts of another appear as part of a diorama in a large trunk. A third scene makes its point with no movement at all. In other words, Famous Puppet Death Scenes isn't for everyone, but audiences interested in something unusual will find a lot to appreciate here. Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company
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