Ronnie Burkett, Happy again

Written and performed by Ronnie Burkett
At Canadian Stage Berkeley Street

Rating: * * * *

As Ronnie Burkett returns to Canadian Stage with Happy, there's great news. The daredevil puppeteer has now mastered his latest stunt and emerges from Happy triumphant and unscathed.

This poignant puppet show about life and death first appeared at the World Stage festival last April, in a form that was thoughtful and provocative but also confusing and lopsided. Burkett then toured the show to Montreal and Germany before making some changes for this extended run at Canadian Stage's Berkeley Street theatre. After an interval of nine months, the cuts and additions seem subtle enough, but the wisdom of Happy is now revealed.

Happy has two hosts -- or three if you include Burkett, the big guy who introduces the action with a little rumination on the importance of colour in life. He hands his duties over to the title character, Happy by name and by nature, a Second World War vet who lives in a rooming house filled with odd characters. There's the nerdy old bachelor Raymond in hopeless love with the bingo-playing big mouth Lucille. There's the pouting gay hairdresser Ricky bickering away with his lover. And there's the young widow Karla, senseless with grief over the death of her Drew. Happy and his cohorts then make way for a play-within-the-play, an all-grey cabaret directed by our third host, the outlandish Antoine Marionette.

In this new version, the relationship between the other-worldly cabaret and the rooming house is much more satisfactorily delineated: The wicked Antoine takes Karla and the audience through campy little numbers representing the stages of grief, from denial to acceptance, while Happy, Lucille and Raymond try to comfort her in a less satirical vein. With his hinting and foreshadowing all carefully balanced now, Burkett leads us gently towards his themes as he dangles yet another puppet from the all-white scaffolding-cum-treasure-chest that is his set, storehouse and stage.

By the time he finally reveals the key to Happy's happiness, he has pulled off much frank talk, several deaths, some nudity and a suicide -- all within the confines of a puppet show. A scene set in a concentration camp at the end of the war still feels dangerously disconnected from the rest of the action, but in general, Burkett has made his little puppets miraculous vessels for immense adult themes. 

Until March 3 (416-368-3110), and at the Manitoba Theatre Centre in Winnipeg from March 22 to April 7.

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