Sitting in the bustling courtyard of The Warren at Brighton Fringe and looking at the image on the flyer of the nearly life-size naked cloth puppet with gangly limbs and sagging breasts, I had high hopes for Bark and B. I am a fan of puppetry and certainly support the notion that puppetry is not just for children! Sadly, however, this show was a disappointment.
T, B's deceased aunt and now ghostly puppet, left a will bequeathing the container theatre we sat in to her niece B but on one condition - that she performs a one hour show. The performers regularly checked how much time they had left to complete of the show with an audience member and her watch, however, what started out as a joke, became an actual countdown for the audience to the end. The performers, as natural and charming as they were, stole my attention rather than breathing life into their delightfully homemade puppets.
B, the aforementioned naked cloth puppet along with her unlikely lover Bark and the endearing 'Techfishian,' Gourdan, shared some briefly tender moments but these were too few to gain any real connection from the audience. For me, the shadow puppetry was a real highlight, not necessarily for the execution but for the well crafted scenes and puppets. Overall the puppets, not forgetting the mop head janitor, felt like pawns in the performer's improv games and at times, props rather than characters.
Ultimately it feels as if the 'puppetry rule book,' if such a thing exists, was well and truly ripped up. This was first brought to my attention when the performers were drumming up business in the courtyard of The Warren by walking around with some of the puppets from the show. The puppets were left floating in mid air, moving their mouths with no voice and were not given the focus and attention that they required in order to be magical. Rules are made to be broken though, right? Yes, but this time round I think Bark and B would have done well to abide.
There is great potential here for Bark and B, as a scratch performance this would have been good but it didn't feel like a finished production, rather a series of devices and ideas. I would love to see Bark and B come back with something more, please do!
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