Unleashing puppet dogs of war
Ubu and the Truth Commission Written by Jane Taylor. Directed by William Kentridge in collaboration with Handspring Puppet Company. Until Sunday, at the Berkeley Street Theatre Downstairs, 26 Berkeley St. canadianstage.com or 416-368-3110 Same puppets, very different war.
The company best known for the megahit War Horse, which ran in Toronto for nearly a year in 2012, is back with an arresting production first performed in post-apartheid Johannesburg. But this time, Handspring Puppet Company trades in War Horse’s naturalistic farm animals and sentimental story for much more conceptual creatures and an enigmatic, brutal tale.
And unlike the big-budget smash, these puppets are much more than eye candy.
In playwright Jane Taylor’s 1997 play Ubu and the Truth Commission, Handspring’s gorgeously designed puppets by Adrian Kohler — including a vulture, a crocodile and a threeheaded dog brought to life by puppeteers Gabriel Marchand, Mongi Mthombeni and Mandiseli Maseti — all help their master get away with vile crimes against humanity.
During the historic Truth and Reconciliation Commission in 1996, the perpetrators of apartheid violence often claimed to be puppets at the hands of their bosses; the real puppets play a more cunning role. The dogs are the henchmen (a soldier, a general and a politician), with the body of a briefcase — they’re just doing their job, after all. The crocodile gossips and literally eats the evidence, filling its canvas bag body and carrying the burden around with it. And the vulture squawks out party lines, only moving when triggered robotically and otherwise a constant silent watcher.
There are two other puppets that attempt to liberate the truth: human puppets that offer first-hand witness accounts of the violence and dehumanization, and a pair of podium microphones that take on a life of their own when disingenuous words are spoken into them, resulting in a surprising and exciting climax.
In fact, the puppets in Ubu and the Truth Commission seem to have much more control over their actions than their human co-stars, Pa Ubu (Dawid Minnaar) and his wife Ma Ubu (Busi Zokufa). While Pa, dressed in infantile plain white undergarments, works nightly with his death squad, Ma tap dances and dreams of power and money. That is, until a foreign smell she catches on him sparks suspicions of infidelity, the worst crime imaginable for the shallow and shrill woman.
But with the help of some grue- some stop-motion animation by director William Kentridge, we see the real cause of the smell: “blood and dynamite.” As the Truth Commission threatens their livelihoods, the cartoonish Pa and Ma stumble, though still always come out on top.
In the final week of Canadian Stage’s Spotlight South Africa festival, Kentridge’s production adapts Alfred Jarry’s infamous absurdist 1896 classic Ubu Roi to reflect contemporary South Africa and its modern history. And Minnaar successfully channels the ineptitude and naiveté of the original Ubu, strutting around the stage in his underwear like the famous emperor with a fancy new wardrobe.
But this play — a mashup of Shakespeare, Brecht, farce and documentary — sometimes overwhelms in its imagery. Kentridge’s animations, though useful in demonstrating the horror behind the silly story, are overused and often repetitive. And ultimately, the symbolism and abstract representation of a county’s complicated political history is not as effective as the true life testimonials we hear from the victims, especially for an audience not steeped in that same history.
Nevertheless, it’s a treat to see Handspring’s work in the intimate Berkeley Street Theatre. We could watch these dogs of war let slip any day.