Autumn Portraits from Sandglass Theatre at the Little Angel Theatre

International Award Winning Puppetry

The great issue of facing our humanity as we grow older, is captured in just under an hour of reflections presented by Sandglass in an interesting twist where inanimate objects reflect the nature of our finite existence, evoking human emotion, hope, fear and loss and the puppet and puppet master vie for control, each having their moment. The allegory of man and man manipulated by a greater force is neatly placed within the staging. Restless, uneasy waiting, a sense of having lived a little too much in the wings, a folklore tale of the untimely loss of a child, wrestling with a demon, and resistance to succumbing to death: these are the themes played out through five tales in Eric Bass’s artfully crafted show Autumn Portraits. As in life and death, it’s not entirely what you’re expecting.

The first character wrestles to break free from ropes in which his puppeteer has bound him; the metaphorical and literal ties that bind. He frets fitfully watching the ‘sands of time’ in an hour glass that cannot be upturned once more; a silent and disturbing struggle with the nature of life and death. Second up is O’Neil, a showman and chancer with a dry wit, he recalls his days in the limelight although we’re not so sure he ever had much of a shot at it. ‘Illumination always makes things brighter’ he remarks ruefully. A storyteller uses masks to enact the tale of an eagle and child in which a mother witnesses a bird of prey comfort her child; the father in disbelief, aiming to kill the eagle, pierces his child with an arrow. A monk passes his life in meditation, contemplation, chimes a singing bowl, and then faces the demon death in bloodstained robes in perhaps the most perplexing of the five tales. The portrait of Wegel, a Jewish shoemaker, is the warmest and most telling of the stories; when the Angel of Death comes calling the cobbler tells him he has the wrong address, the wrong person and that a little girl needs shoes he must make, so it cannot be his time. In recounting his life, his vocation and his instinct to always listen to unexpected voices, he faces the revelation that his time is up.

The finale of the show is the return of O’Neil engaging with his audience to perplex, amuse and affectionately deride in a piece of crowd/ puppet interaction that takes the room by surprise and lightens the load of this contemplation of our finite existence with genuine laughter, embarrassment and some ‘dying on stage’. An intelligent, surprising and captivating hour.

Bryony Hegarty

The SUSPENSE festival runs in venues across London until 06 Nov. See listings for details.

http://www.suspense.com