Director and designer: Mamoru Iriguchi
Co-director and co-designer: Fergus Dunnet
Two human performers, Mamoru Iriguchi and Julia Darrouy, have fun interacting with puppet versions of themselves of decreasing size, suggesting that they themselves are growing. The show asks the kind of existential questions that might bug you when you’re tired on a long train journey: if your heart beats slower, does time pass differently? There’s some playing with sound on the basis that you might hear things differently according to your size and heartbeat.
All of this theorising might drag if the visuals weren’t arresting and the narration wasn’t suitably tongue-in-cheek, which it is. When the performers replay scenes from different perspectives, they do so with wit and panache. You can sense that there’s a lot of energy and commitment going into this performance even though it’s neither speedy nor frenetic.
This is a puppetry show that’s at least as much about puppetry as it is about science or the themes of birth, sex and death that are explored. It’s playfully ‘meta’. Within the story there are even some lessons in puppetry from a third performer, Gavin Pringle, who initially appears only as a puppet operating the show from a laptop at the side of the stage.
Much use is made of voice recordings, which free the performers to focus on the movement elements. One thing the two full-size lead performers do very well is imitate the movement of the puppets. Overall their spare, disciplined and precise movement reflects well on the work of Suzi Cunningham, the movement director. The realisation of scenes representing pregnancy and birth is both audacious and effective. The design elements – especially the puppets, costumes and masks – all work well on a stage that’s fairly open and bare, drawing the eye of the spectator.
Altogether, Iriguchi’s quirky vision is colourfully brought to life (and death) in a thoughtful succession of scenes that plug away at some lively ideas. Drawing from his design background, the director’s performance work ties everything together and gives it coherence.
If you’ve never been to an event at the Manipulate Festival before – the programme brings together visual theatre, puppetry and animated film – this show, running at just under an hour, offers an enjoyable way in. It’s not too dark or edgy and humour is never far away, although it carries an age advisory of 12+.
Runs until 6 February 2026 | Image: Contributed
