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If you're looking for a lo-fi panto this year,
Dynamic New Animation's production of Puss in Boots is (a) surefire
winner: a bumptious romp through the fable in the company of a wisecracking
puss, his thick master, a medically obsessed princess and a musical
band of dead mice. The brilliant Preston-based DNA cleverly employ
puppetry techniques, shadow box animation and good old-fashioned
song and dance to weave their tale.
An ingeniously reamshackle set keeps the children
guessing. The performers - all two of them - keep up a riotous pace,
deftly changing costumes and voices to keep a full cast of characters
in play. Recent UCLAN acting graduate Miriam Grau Casas and Adam
Bennett (whose past solo productions include Chicken Licken and
The Enormous Turnip) make an excellent team. Director Steve Tiplady's
previous work includes directing the puppetry in the Royal Shakespeare
Company's Venus and Adonis and A Midsummer Night's Dream.
This is definitely not your typical pantomime,
though there are men wearing dresses and shouts of 'It's behind
you!'. All the traditions are present, then, but with a more homespun
sweetness that will appeal to anyone weary of the high-bombast glitz
of Christmas. Family entertainment doesn't get much better than
this.
Kate Feld - Manchester Metro
11 December 2006
This performance by Dynamic New Animation and
directed by Steve Tiplady, is a retelling of the familiar Henri
Perrault fairytale. In DNA's show the set is a centrally placed
multi-use wooden contraption which reads as part barrow, part carriage,
part traditional puppet show stage (with dazzling live performances
from the Mouse Band) and, of course, dressing up-area. The contraption
pays homage to the handmade world of (and the many contraptions
historically used in) theatre and especially puppetry.
It is this unusual and clever stage management which is the foundation
for much of the performance's plot, beginning with Charlie and Juanita
who are auctioning off their stage props because they have given
up storytelling as 'there's no money in it' and 'are going back
to Spain'. But some props seem to have a story to tell, like the
princess's dress, the thick book of fairy tales, and the cat which,
after digesting a mouse running through the old fairytale book,
begins to narrate.
With an improvisational use of props, as in waving a little model
of a windmill at the mention of the mill where the miller's son
was born, and showing pictures of a horse and carriage when the
king and his daughter are on their journey, DNA create a fast-paced
and witty humour, both visual and verbal, which is delightful to
adults and children. The story of Puss In Boots is so well known
that the audience's pleasure came in seeing how the two people who
constitute DNA would present it, how the lake in which the miller's
son drowns is made of cheap blue hessian ground sheet, how the princess
is a doctor, having studied with the Order of St John's Ambulance,
how the miller's son would become so hungry he would try to eat
his socks, how the ogre would assume many her many forms with a
minimal set.
It is hard to temper one's enthusiasm for a performance like this,
which was so funny, camp and imaginative, and had so much appeal
for all ages. And this is the secret: at the beginning of theatre
season, look for this theatre company, and this director, and book..
A performance like this is worth more than any big lavish blockbuster
performance. This is a must-see-show. And afterwards, it will be
"we must see all their shows."
Thelma Mort localsecrets.com
The Junction Saturday 2nd December 2006
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