The Fredösphere

All four of us attended a family performance of Tall Horse last night.  The Maharincess, just turned four, didn't make it all the way through, but she did okay.  Der Drübermensch seemed to like it.  The puppet work was spectacular; way beyond anything I've ever seen.  The centerpiece was a full-sized giraffe manipulated from within by two men.  The guy in front worked the front legs via stilts, plus swung the neck and head around.  I'd hate to be his chiropractor.

No great effort is made to hide the puppet masters, yet the mind relentlessly anthropomorphizes (and zoömorphizes -- is that a word? Google answers ... "yeah, why not!") these objects of wood and cloth.  Thus, I amused myself for quite some time by slipping on and off my suspension of disbelief like a well-worn pair of sneakers.

Tall Horse continues a certain trend in the theater:  a puppet is manipulated and voiced by persons not necessarily of the same race or gender.  (See Mark Steyn's review of the musical Lennon, wherein John Lennon is played by nine actors, including four women.)  Partly this is just a fad, partly it is the kind of slightly racy experimentation you would expect from theater people, but (I am guessing) it is mostly a P.C. dodge:  when a stupid, selfish, ugly, brutal character is portrayed with ambiguous race or gender, it cannot be viewed as an attack on an entire demographic group.

We sat on the extreme right side of the house, and could not hear some of the dialog.  The wifeösphere complained of that more than I, and she was also confused by the African mask look in the faces of all the puppets, so she was slow to understand that some of the characters were French.  I found the puppets so good, I forgave the weaknesses of the overall theatrical experience.

It was funny to see Ken Fischer working the crowd before the performance.  He's the director of the University Musical Society, the host of the performance.  He reminds me of Howard Dean, but with a phenomenal work ethic and, frankly, better political skills.

Here is the official website of the Handspring Puppet Company.