The Stage

Or You Could Kiss Me

Published Thursday 7 October 2010 at 16:36 by Nuala Calvi

After the thundering success of War Horse at the National, expectations have been high for Or You Could Kiss Me, Handspring Puppet Company’s follow-up collaboration with designer Rae Smith.

While that showed puppets and storytelling on an epic scale - with life-size horses in a sweeping First World War tale - this arguably returns puppets to what they do best - intimate, detailed, visual storytelling that captures emotion and meaning in a way that words never can.

These powers are put to perfect use in conveying the highly charged yet apparently mundane moments in the daily life of an elderly couple - two men, one of whom is dying of emphysema.

Three-quarter life-size puppets, with craggily carved wooden faces and limbs that appear stripped back to bone and sinew, offer a poignant portrait of human frailty, the toll taken by every small task emphasized by the sight of no less than six puppeteers hard at work on their limbs.

The setting is an apartment in Port Elizabeth in 2036, but we spend almost as much time in the South Africa of the 1970s, as the men, sifting through old photographs, find themselves sucked into reveries of their early life together. Moments such as a sun-drenched first meeting on the beach or a furtive kiss on a squash court are suffused with a surreal quality, as ‘younger’ puppets dive in slow motion into the sea or meet in mid-air to embrace, suggesting the hyperreal, mythologising effect of memory.

Particularly moving is the knowledge that Handspring’s Basil Jones and Adrian Kohler, whose own relationship inspires the story, are among the puppeteers and provide the voices.

But while the puppets are captivating, writer Neil Bartlett seems nervous of letting them hold the stage, throwing in an almost constant monologue from Adjoa Andoh as, variously, the couple’s nurse, housekeeper, lawyer and a lecturer on human memory.

Her interruptions add little to our understanding of what these two men are going through and take up time that might have been better spent fleshing out their earlier story, which sometimes feels frustratingly sparse. The danger here is that audiences will revert to the pre War Horse view that puppetry cannot sustain demanding, grown-up theatre - the truth is that it can, when the writing matches it.

Search Amazon for Or You Could Kiss Me items Search for tickets at Ticketmaster