The once mighty Honoria Whitelace (rhymes with ‘on-OR-ia’ rather than ‘gonorrhoea’) has turned her back on the high seas and now spends her days diving to the bottom of rum bottles and professing “real estate” to be “the real adventure these days.” Enter the idealistic young monsters Lily and Mike to draw her back to an adventure for the greatest treasure of all time. The story finds an added dimension with skilful puppetry by experimental Melbourne puppetry companies Terrible Comfort and Barking Spider Visual Theatre. Given the premise, I’d been expecting more of an experience akin to the Avenue Q world of contemporary puppetry, and so was somewhat bemused to find myself in an audience better suited to The Muppets.
X promises “Pirates!, “Puppets!” and “Adventure!”, and it certainly delivers. The highlight of the show is by far the craftsmanship and use of the puppets themselves. With puppetry direction by Penelope Bartlau, the show is an impressive example of the possibilities of expression that the genre can offer. Not only are the monster characters and actor counterparts seamless in their choreography, X also combines clever shadow puppetry and silhouettes for harder-to-stage scenes, including the appearance of an unexpected (although not entirely unwelcomed) speedo-clad, demon-eyed Tony Abbot puppet as a monster of the deep.
Considering he had a younger target audience in mind, writer Robert Reid’s script felt a little more wordy than was perhaps necessary, and could have benefited from more faith in the actors and puppets to use their physicality for the comedy. The show is not without some good one-liners, however the biggest laugh from the night came from a young audience member who, during a tension-filled sword fight, pondered aloud as to whether the swords were “made in China?”
A great show to take your 7-year-old godson to see and thus make up for forgetting his birthday last year. Not one for your sullen 13-year-old though. X is one for the family, and for anyone else who wants to support independent arts companies (and doesn’t mind a good sea-zombie routine).
