The Plank Panel wonders why billy doesn't twinkle
[img_assist|nid=653|title=Billy don't twinkle, Ronnie Burkett shocks the panel; photo: Helen Tansey|desc=|link=none|align=left|width=242|height=288]Your Plank Panel, with no strings attached:
*Maryse Zeidler:* who is no man's puppet
*Andrew Templeton:* who fears he is a puppet
*Allyson McGrane:* who likes puppets because they don't talk back
The production: _Billy Twinkle: Requiem for a Golden Boy_, part of this year's "PuSh Festival":http://pushfestival.ca/index.php
*Maryse:* Maybe the problem was that my expectations were too high. Having seen Ronnie Burkett's work before, a long time ago in Calgary, and knowing the years of accolades that he has garnered throughout his career, I figured this was a slam dunk.
Alas, no such luck.
_Billy Twinkle: Requiem for a Golden Boy_, captures the life of a middle-aged puppeteer earning his living performing kitschy marionette acts on a cruise ship. The aging performer decides to take his own life after being fired for shushing a corpulent, buffet-binging audience member. As he is about to take the plunge, his childhood mentor, Sid Diamond, shows up as a bunny ear-wearing sock puppet. The rest of the show consists of Sid rekindling Billy's love and passion for puppetry by re-enacting Billy's career with a marionette show he will never forget.
Does this story sound familiar? Lemme take a moment to say that I’ve never even seen It’s a Wonderful Life, but know the story as well as the rest of the free world. This is not a particularly original idea, and Burkett did not take it anywhere particularly new.
Part middle-age crisis piece, part homage to the history of marionettes, there are some wonderful moments throughout. I’ve never seen a marionette in a g-string before, but now I can safely say that I have the image burned into my cerebral cortex for the rest of my life.
*Andrew:* Quiet alarm bells started to ring when we walked in and saw the set. It was quite ugly with swooping stairs on each side that wobbled alarmingly when Burkett mounted them. The set then came to a point (meant to evoke the prow of the ship he was about to jump from) thereby creating an enormous and rather worrying heart-shaped effect.
The alarm bells got louder during the opening sequence when, after a couple of acts with marionettes - including the stripper and a bear on roller skates - Burkett started a monologue. A monologue laced with the "to be or not to be" soliloquy from Hamlet and I found myself thinking "is he...is he..._acting_?"
I guess my expectations too were through the roof. I had seen his previous show, 10 Days on Earth and was fairly blown away. Three things in particular stayed with me from that show: Burkett's ability to channel character through his puppets. It was a phenomenal performance and I can still recall the street prophet, the hilarious talking dog and the child-like central character. The second element was the sheer beauty of the set and the puppets which created fully realized worlds with many haunting images. And finally Burkett's ability to tell a story. Here was a puppet show that was more concerned with execution of story than the majority of mainstream theatre shows we see in this town.
10 Days on Earth went on a bit too long but I didn't care. It was magic. Billy Twinkle went on far too long and I cared deeply. In fact, every scene seemed to go on too long and I found myself willing the thing forward. Perhaps the most distressing thing was just how derivative it all was. It is like It's a Wonderful Life crossed with the old "mad puppeteer talking to his puppet" saw told in the Twilight Zone.
I think I might be in shock.
*Allyson:* Me too! I must admit that I'm a complete newbie to Ronnie Burkett's puppet mastery. And although he certainly is a puppet master, I just don't think Shakespeare is his strong suit. I really enjoyed the straight puppet acts - the show routines created by the aging Billy Twinkle including a classy stripper, a drunken socialite and an old man with a surprise in his pants. I also LOVED the Jesus rap number performed by a blue-hair amateur puppeteer - she stole the show for me!
But overall, I couldn't get into this story. I didn't see any vulnerability in Billy - I never believed that he might actually off himself! I think that Billy's mentor was right to come back to life as a hand puppet and give him hell... but I didn't watch to watch Billy's It’s a Wonderful Life journey. I would rather have seen Billy as a new man creating new and exciting puppet routines!
*Maryse:* I didn't have a problem with the set, although it was slightly alarming to notice how much it lurched from side to side every time Burkett ran up the steps. Nope, the set was the least of my concerns. It was really the narrative that irked me the most. In trying to offer an homage to puppetry and showcase a variety of marionette tricks, Burkett leads his audience into a scattered, disjointed narrative that spills all over the place. Don't get me wrong: the individual marionette acts were a delight to watch, and Burkett really is a master of the form. I mean, I can't imagine it gets more complicated than manipulating a marionette that is manipulating its own mini-marionette... But each act took us away from the story and went on much too long. Overall the story was really kind of, well, labored and self-indulgent.
According to an interview with "CBC":http://www.cbc.ca/arts/theatre/story/2008/10/22/f-ronnie-burkett-billy-t..., Burkett had been working on the concept of Billy Twinkle for the past eight years. He thought that his original idea of making the piece autobiographical seemed too self-absorbed. But how does having a thinly veiled fictional narrative makes it any less egotistical, or any more interesting? So the puppet came from Moose Jaw instead of Lethbridge… So the character’s “successful” career is based on a cruise ship instead of a stage… This is still obviously Burkett working out his own issues. There’s nothing wrong with that – I just wish he hadn’t turned the whole thing into such a cliché.
*Andrew:* I too was kind of troubled by not clearly understanding the relationship between Burkett and Twinkle. It's interesting that Burkett worried about the show appearing to be too self-absorbed yet that this was an auto-biographical piece seems inescapable to me. It also seem a rather strange choice for Burkett to choose as his familiar a man who does camp, show tunes with puppets on a cruise ship. I suspect if he hadn't hedged his bet and just gone for a straight autobiographical show it would have been more successful, it certainly would have seemed more honest (and helped with Allyson's point about not really buying the whole suicide-thing that the show is built around).
As you've both said, there were some fantastic, laugh-out loud moments and you've both identified them: the stripper at the top of the show, Doreen Gray the Jesus-rap woman and her mini-Jesus puppet (complete with his own crucifix) and the topper, the old man who lifts his hospital gown to show his expanding testicle sack. But they were simply random highlights thrown out there. I'm not quite sure what the relationship was between Twinkle and Doreen Gray - although it was easily the most affecting moment. I have no idea why the old man - Sid, his old mentor - does the expanding testicle thing, except that it's always good to end on a high point to stop people remembering how disappointing the previous two hours have been.
Perhaps, most painfully, these random moments were grafted onto the most pedestrian and dreary storyline. I'm sure everyone in the audience was awaiting the arrival of the young puppeteer - the next incarnation of Billy Twinkle. There is nothing wrong with reinventing old stories but you do have to, you know, reinvent them.
As we said when we talked after the show, Allyson, there was not enough there and there was too much of what was there.
*Allyson:* Andrew, you promised me that I would not be disappointed if I went. In fact, and I quote: "Well, I don't want to over-sell this show, but Burkett is pretty special. It's pretty clever stuff." It was certainly clever. But I wonder if the artist was seduced by his own cleverness... and that's why he led us through so many clichés that I overheard an audience member wondering aloud "was that a true story?" Isn't that the red flag of sentimentality that signals movie-of-the-week melodrama?
So for me, the next time that Ronnie Burkett comes to town... I hope that he brings a more interesting story in addition to his masterful puppetry.
_Billy Twinkle: Requiem for a Golden Boy; Written, created and performed by Ronnie Burkett; Music John Alcorn; Lighting Design Kevin Humphrey; Running to Feb 8, 8pm (no shows Mondays) at the Waterfront Theatre. Part of the PuSh Festival. For more information go_ "here":http://pushfestival.ca/index.php?mpage=shows&spage=main&id=72#show.