Puppet show takes breath away
By COLIN MACLEAN

RONNIE  BURKETT IS A MASTER MAGICIAN.

He comes on stage and disappears. Which is some feat considering he is providing all the voices for his menagerie of marionettes, playing a role himself and manipulating the strings. 

His concentration is so strong, aided by Bill Williams' impeccably designed pinpoint lighting, that he wills you to look only at his intricate creations. 

Burkett long ago moved beyond the traditional puppet show to delve into Nazi terror (Tinka's New Dress) and the contaminated blood scandal (Street of Blood). 

Happy, now playing at the Roxy Theatre, is the third in his trilogy. And it's the most successful. 

Melancholy hangs like a sombre cloud over Burkett's meditation on life, death and the effect of memory. Each of his tiny wooden people has a story to tell and reveals amazing depth. 

Anyone who has seen Burkett perform knows how real his creations are - meticulously crafted down to the smallest detail. The puppet master gives them an uncanny life; a skilful hand gesture here, a tilted head, a shuffling walk that belongs to that character alone. Small gestures that mirror the way we move. 

There are whole scenes so well and realistically staged as to take your breath away. The inanimate marionettes are handed to Burkett by an assistant and the second he touches the strings they spring into amazing and graceful life. Wait until you catch the basset hound. It didn't do much - just came out and walked across the stage - but when it trotted off on opening night there was a spontaneous burst of applause. 

The set (also by Burkett) is a huge cabinet of white wood, with drawers, lights and various enclosed spaces. The two-tiered creation revolves to become several sets. 

Happy is set in a rooming house mostly inhabited by a group of threadbare seniors who have seen better days. 

The central character is Happy, a war veteran who has decided to end his days, well, happily. He has a jaunty hat on his head and a permanently quizzical look on his face. He's full of waggish wisdom and comments seasoned by a long and full life that hides an event of great pain many years before. 

We meet Raymond, a lonely geezer who never managed to find his life. He's been in love for years with Lucille, a funny, gutter-mouthed, chain-smoking harpy. There are two aging gays and two young lovers; Carla, a waifish poet, and her hipster boyfriend, Drew. 

Drew dies in an intensely moving scene where Burkett tenderly lifts the now lifeless puppet into an intense red light. The music swells as Burkett deposits him (it?) in a shroud and then into a drawer. 

In case you think that Burkett has lost his sardonic sense of humour, the cabinet revolves and in the back is a glitzy set where a creature named Antoine Marionette stages a cabaret in gray. Devoid of colour, a tatty troupe - a black jazz singer, a lounge lizard, an overweight diva - hilariously send up Elizabeth Kubler-Ross's five stages of grief. 

My favourite, both in terms of the satiric effect and the quite incredible dexterity it must take to animate her, is a tiny musician, Jacqueline Dupressed, who actually seems to be playing a cello. 

There are quite wrenching moments of exquisite sadness - others of such exultation that you can feel your heart beating in your chest. 

Remember I'm talking marionettes here. In fact, I wonder if we would be so moved if these emotions weren't generated by puppets. The very artificiality of the tiny creatures allows them to tap into extravagant feelings and sentiments that might be too much for live actors. 

And it's all from bits of string, hunks of wood and splashes of paint. But in the hands of this master showman we are privileged to enter a remarkable Lilliputian world peopled by creatures with big, beating hearts.

Happy, a production of Ronnie Burkett's Rink-A-Dink Company and presented by Theatre Network, runs through Dec.10 at the Roxy Theatre.

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