Fringe, Reviewed: Incongruous
Please note: This article is published as an archive copy from Philadelphia City Paper. My City Paper is not affiliated with Philadelphia City Paper. Philadelphia City Paper was an alternative weekly newspaper in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. The last edition was published on October 8, 2015.
"Puppets praising their dicks does not a play make."
[puppet theater]
Audiences Wanted Productions
Attended: Sat. Sept. 6, 6 p.m., Studio X; Closes: Sunday, Sept. 21, 6:30 p.m.
Come and discover why this is the one and only puppet show for mature audiences' inner child.
WE THINK:
Puppeteer and performer Laurencio Carlos Ruiz makes some interesting puppets, each about two feet tall with wooden bodies, flexible limbs, gray skin, and big eyes and lips. Moreover, they all have some sort of physical handicap or deformity, and they're all nude. Apparently, one must be "mature" to see puppet penises.
Then he decided to write and voice their monologues himself. Oh, writer! Oh, actors! We need you!
One's ear adjusts to Ruiz's heavily accented, often whiney Spanish accent, but his vocal quality never changes for the six characters he voices. Then he engages in apparently improvised dialogue with them, confirming that they all share his limited voice.
Worse, though, is that the characters' monologues are devoid of dramatic content. Understanding their situations requires reading the program beforehand -- for one, Ruiz or a character (who knows?) even says, when discussing a condition called phocomelia, "If you don't know, I put it in your program." Not that I needed an invitation to read the program by that point. Most of the characters declare that despite their abnormalities, they are happy with their bodies, yay! But puppets praising their dicks does not a play make.
The body image message could have been incorporated into something called a story (it's not in your program, so look it up elsewhere), scripted by a playwright, in which actors' voices could have helped shape distinctive, compelling, sincere characters.
Ruiz's puppets do cool things, which he can't resist bragging about: "Have you never seen a puppet smoking before?" No, but I have enjoyed puppets as characters in stories a few hundred times. Have you?
That Ruiz's fledgling theater company invested heavily in merchandizing -- buy a t-shirt in the lobby! -- further illustrates the show's fatal disconnect. This is a showcase of objects, not a play.
