"dreamy imagery... authentic homespun illusion"

June 28, 2002 performance reviewed by Jocelyn McGrath

Twist’s Petrushka is a sensory treat—beautiful, unusual, live music, and entrée into a small world of visual opulence. An enormous, ornate, gilded frame surrounds the stage, and there are richly hued curtains hanging within it. This sets up an atmosphere of fairy tale, which is enhanced by the entrance of Julia and Irina Elinka, identical twins and marvelous pianists. As the curtain rose, they played Stravinsky’s "A Sonata For Two Pianos."

Mr. Twist’s puppetry for this project is a fusion of two culturally separate techniques: Bunraku, a Japanese style that involves the use of large puppets manipulated by more than one person, and Czech black theatre, in which black clad puppeteers remain practically invisible right on the stage.

The effect of this mixture is a field of space in which puppets, or in the case of this first piece, large, flat geometric shapes, float and shift, forming patterns and dispersing. The effect is somewhat ghostly; it was clear that people were manipulating the action on stage, but they were mysteriously hidden from us. The troupe performed this illusion of ghostly deus ex machina to good effect. It was a simple pleasure to feel the relationship between the music and these basic forms, and the patterns that by theme and variation got progressively more complex.

The title piece for the evening starts with a similar approach, and the scene is playfully set and unset: floating hands play instruments, onion domes pop out of the floor, a row of chickens pass by, and bouquets of flowers artfully arrange themselves in the air.

In our first introduction to the main characters, they are a trio of pitifully small stringed puppets, hanging in space by several puppet-master hands. But a moment later these disappear and are replaced by three super puppets—larger, faster, coordinated and articulated. The three perform a wildly exuberant dance together.

In an interview, Mr. Twist describes his fascination with turning the tables on the usual result of ballet dancers pretending to be puppets. He felt that dancers become limited and “robotic,” while his own puppets perform dance uninhibited by human limitations, and possess a “great freedom of movement and expression.” One of the most striking freedoms is the freedom from gravity. The ballerina’s choreography is so precise and well executed—so real—that when she takes a graceful slow motion leap, it is as if she really possesses magical powers. Once, in getting a longer-than-usual glimpse of one of the puppeteers, I even found myself wondering what that person was doing on stage, an irrational thought that pays tribute to how fully these puppets’ characters were realized.

Petrushka is filled with dreamy imagery—glowing, rotating pinwheels, and sumptuous amounts of undulating cloth, and disembodied hands flapping like birds. Twist takes the time to explore these effects, working them through several variations. There was a marvelous sense of thoroughness, appealing to the child-like desire to see enough of the pretty thing, as well as clarity of structure that kept the adult mind occupied.

At a time when any illusion can be made to look absolutely real with computers, it was refreshing to be in the presence of authentic homespun illusion: a curtain, some lights, a group of very talented people, and a man with a vision.