Phantasmagoria
Phantasmagoria Conceived, Written and Directed by John DiDonna
Choreography by Yezzi
Empty Spaces Theatre Company and Orlando Puppet Festival
At The Lowndes Shakespeare Center, Orlando, Fl</strong>
Lost in a dream, lost in someone else’s head – that’s how I felt after the exquisite and extravagant mix of dance, theatre, and puppetry. The room is packed, and three fossilized women are trapped in clay urns left over from last year’s Becket Fest. A thunderstorm is brewing on a projection screen – the clouds are low and ominous, yet their only movement comes from the ventilation system blowing air across the screen. Familiar dancers appear – you’ve seen them with Emotions and Voci and any number of entertainments featuring impossibly thin and flexible women. Skulls fly past in tatters, the clay women are free, and we enter one of the most clever puppet shows in Orlando’s relatively short puppeting history. Clever and a bit sick, it’s Punch and Judy is a Grand Guignol complete with Velcro genitals and spurting blood. We relive The Fall of Man and Vlad the Impaler and note that impaling puppets is much easier then impaling people. Puppets are wonderful, you can do ANYTHING with them, and no one complains. As lackeys wipe the blood off this Shakespearean carpet, gradually more elaborate mechanisms grace our view. Gregor Samsa (Chris Pruett) wakes to find himself late for a train and turned in to a cockroach, a Victorian Penny Dreadful fills the room with more adjectives than Fox News and women dance as ravens with their arms in tortuous positions as actors emote “Nevermore!” Finally, a 16 foot high Frankenstein appears, operated by three puppeteers, his bones from Home Depot, his muscles from Merle Norman, and his heart filled with free thinking Romantics and spare static electricity. Despised by his maker, he can’t even get a date which is a common problem for anyone in the technical trades. Every time I see a DiDonna Production, I think “I never knew he could do that.” It’s just friggin’ amazing.
For more information on Empty Spaces Theater Company, visit http://www.emptyspacestheatre.org
