Gulliver's Travels by Mike P

This ws my first official puppet theater show, so when we were shuffled into the theater with 85% of the audience being very young kids( 7-10yrs old) my first thought was " are we going to see their version of Barney and Friends?" In part I was correct, but it was still different. The play consisted of live actors and of course puppets. The play opened with what I thought to be silhouettes of enlarged actors. The optical illusion was creative, but once the lights were turned on, we were presented with a questionable cast of live actors. Bear in mind this was kids play, but the actors were sloppy at many different times, which seemed to root from not knowng their cues, but the audience(kids) responded by eagerly sitting on the edge of their seats wanting more. Not only were the children excited to see where this adventure would lead them, but I caught a couple glimpses at old grandmothers laughing away, enjoying every moment.

The story was about the fantasy adventure of Gulliver. So you had live actors playing Gulliver, small puppets playing Gulliver, and finally what I thought to be my favorite thing was the very large puppets playing Gulliver. A puppet in the shape of a large head was astonsishing to see because I'm sure that many of us are only used to seeing the small puppets from Sesame Street. The skill of the puppeteers was off the charts. I didnt know that it took not one, not two, but three people to make a puppet flow in the ways of human movement. Combing the skill and personnel for just one puppet is awesome, then add 4 more puppetts on stage. You would think there was no way possible for them to do this but they some how managed so, without any screwups.

This finally brings me to why I didnt like this performace. We all knew the story of Gulliver's Travels, so it was easy to watch what was going on without much frustration. The actors were using elementary speaking, so I'm sure many people in our group were able to pick on things here and there. The problem was that ALL the small puppets that were actually controlled were mic'ed with the most annoying voices, chipmunk voices. Now I know that high shrilled chimunk voices are funny for about 5mins, but an hour and a half show of this is a buzzkill. It ruined the performance almost instantly. The pitch and volume of the characters were so loud and obnoxious that it just hurt my ears. Afterwards when I was trying to cope with what just happend, I was informed that this is what the kids like here, goofy, loud, and high chipmunk voices for all the characters. I was in total disbelief, but I guess thats how they do it here. Overall, I'm glad I can say that I went and saw a puppet show, but that will never happen again in this country. Maybe I'll go to one back in the states, but for now, my ears need rest and recuperation.