Review: Billy Twinkle: Requiem for a Golden Boy, Barbican Silk Street Theatre

Written for Culture Wars

More than any other theatrical medium, puppetry has the ability to shatter the boundaries of possibility. A well-manipulated puppet can not only reflect humanity as acceptably as any actor, but also perform feats utterly beyond the human body. One need only look towards Blind Summit’s Low Life, Complicite’s Shun-kin or Improbable’s Shockheaded Peter to recognize puppetry’s knack for flicking from the mundane to the magical and its capacity to blend metaphor and reality as one.

Ronnie Burkett’s marionettes, however, are a different breed of puppet. Sure, they evoke humanity, but they never threaten to truly uncloak its inner-life; they reflect us without revealing a great deal about us. As such, they feel strangely old-fashioned, somehow constrained by their own peculiar limitations. Controlled by sixteen strings rather than the usual nine and operable with only one hand, Burkett’s marionettes are undoubtedly complex creatures. Yet the technical mastery involved in their construction and manipulation never transforms into wizardry. Indeed, in comparison to the eloquent, expressive puppetry around today, it is the clumsiness of the marionette that shines through.

Instead, Burkett’s puppets work best when still. The detail in their faces and physiques makes them blank canvases ripe for the projection of emotion and thought. Their empty eyes seem, at times, to well with tears; their starched cheeks to flicker with amusement. This subtle capturing of humanity is the asset by which Burkett’s marionettes become the puppet-world’s answer to Strasberg’s Group Theatre.

Strange then to see such formidably convincing actor-puppets paraded in the cruise-ship cabaret of Billy Twinkle (played by, and arguably interchangeable with, Burkett himself).

Twinkle is a disillusioned marionettiste reduced to overseeing a glitzy, gag-ridden circus of strings aboard an ocean liner. Visited on the brink of suicide by a bunny-eared glove puppet of his former mentor, Sid Diamond, Twinkle resolves to tell his life’s story in search of self-worth. Thus, we see the marionette Billy manipulating his own marionettes, growing gradually older, fatter and increasingly disillusioned, but never abandoning his artform.

The thing is that Billy Twinkle: Requiem for a Golden Boy looks and feels like an off-off-Broadway show as pastiched by The Simpsons. Burkett channel-hops between cartoon voices to conduct conversations with himself and litters a sweet story with camp asides. Perhaps this is intentional. It certainly fits with the puppet Twinkle’s dilemma between high art and lowly entertainment: whether t’is nobler to present puppet Shakespeare or striptease. Seen in such a light, Burkett’s piece appears to focus precisely on the limitations of his material co-stars. However, the amateurism and self-indulgence never quite confirms itself as deliberate.

In fact, the highlights of the evening are the self-contained moments of entertainment, each a routine in itself: the dancing bear on roller-skates, the recreational preacher complete with singing glove-puppet Jesus and, best of all, the hobbling pensioner exposing himself to reveal a pink balloon that swells in size.

Burkett’s battle has long been to restate puppetry as an art-form for adults. Here his tactics seem along the lines of South Park or Avenue Q, simply allowing them a crudeness at odds with their cutesy exteriors. The result leaves Burkett’s marionettes looking stuck in adolescence while puppetry elsewhere has grown up and flown the nest.