Imagine yourself sitting in one of the finest gold-gilded, velvet-lined theatres of old world Romanticism. The overture begins; it’s a haunting tune of love and melancholy laced with epic undertones. Hold that thought. Now shrink it to proportions appropriate to finger puppets and you have the opening stanzas of ‘The Cautionary Tale of Barry Von Peabody’.
The curtain goes up and you are welcomed to the tinsel-infused cabaret of the Scarlet St theatre. The violin strings fade away to a raging disco beat and the histrionic Eliza Swan kicks off the night’s performance, throwing herself pathetically around the stage as he/she delivers a powerful medley of lovelorn showstoppers, imploring the audience to “help me if you can, I’m feeling down,” and that she does appreciate us being round. This is theatre owner Barry Von Peabody’s world, or, should we say, it is the world of the man who is pretending to be Barry Von Peabody. Cue appropriate sound effects and smoke machine for childhood flashback to Nazi Germany.
Based in an unassuming and intimate backyard theatre in Brunswick, every performance has a pre-raffle show for one lucky audience member to win a delicately handcrafted puppet. With only 12 seats per show, the odds are looking good and tickets come with a complimentary glass of wine or homebrewed beer.
Simply put, ‘The Cautionary Tale of Barry Von Peabody’ is a delicious morsel of puppetry balanced with all the other essential ingredients of script, sound, lighting and design. A pint-sized tragicomedy of the first degree, performer and creator Jacob Williams has created a show that is heartwarming in an offbeat kind of way. Lured into pathos by the death of Peabody’s wife and Steph O’Hara’s moving sound design, audiences are steered firmly back into comic waters as Peabody is criticised for the ridiculously inappropriate sequined outfit he has worn to the funeral (costume changes are hard for puppets.) Weaving love, death, contortionists, whales and magicians into one dynamic, self-referential piece of theatre, ‘The Cautionary Tale of Barry Von Peabody’ will not disappoint.
