Recurring Images - Stop Motion: Passion, Process and Performance - page 57

wildly innovative, but was disappointed to see a television version that used puppets in the
same way, although here it was more ritualistic, with burning replacing my drowning. Still, I
thrill at seeing puppets being used to disconcert and to say what human characters cannot.
Puppets can do evil so well, and I wish there was more of this dark side represented.

Doctor Faustus

A memorable encounter with puppets, which whetted my ravenous appetite, was the Royal
Shakespeare Company's 1973 production of
Doctor Faustus , with Ian McKellen as Faustus.
Mephistopheles l uidly appeared out of the
shadows of the study, and tempted Faustus with
the deadly sins, gathering up some blankets
which became puppets operated by Faustus. A
shape for a head and a sleeve suggested an arm,
but the audience saw another person on stage.
Most amazing was Helen of Troy: just rags, but
manipulated by McKellen as if the world's most
beautiful woman was seducing him, his own
sleeved arm caressing himself. When spent, he
dropped these blankets and 'Helen' lay there as a
soiled sheet, brilliantly exposing the emptiness
of his desires. This is a pertinent illusion, which
I acknowledge in the Midsummer Night's Dream
sequence in Next , where Bottom gets carried away
with a length of blue silk, imagining it to be Titania.
As he loses his ass's head it becomes a piece of
limp cloth as insubstantial as his tryst with Titania.
Look, there's a man with an animal head again. Shakespeare as Bottom with Titania.

Shockheaded Peter

This hugely popular stage show arrived as The Lion King was dazzling audiences with its blend
of puppetry and live actors. Shockheaded Peter did the same on a smaller budget, but shocked
audiences. Built around several cautionary tales and set in an of -kilter toy theatre, it had
disturbing songs from The Tiger Lillies . One story, poor Tom Suckathumb, climaxed with a vocal
audience reaction such as I had never witnessed before: one of pure horror, brought about by
the mutilation of a small basic puppet, manipulated by visible operators. So many people were
willingly taken in by an astonishingly simple illusion. Tom was a three-foot puppet with one of
the visible operator's hands operating a gash for a mouth in its head. His 'mother' warned him
what would happen if he continued to suck his thumb and left Poor Tom alone
on stage, gently sucking his thumb, at the mercy of an actor bearing huge fake
scissors. With a well-timed look out front, Tom's button eyes conveyed so much
dread that the audience shifted uncomfortably in their seats, collectively thinking
'surely not …?' Sure enough, the scissor man advanced, and snip snip! Tom's
thumbs fell to the l oor. I haven't before heard such a scream from an audience.
Tom tried to retrieve his severed thumbs, made of potato, in his i ngers. His mouth