OR YOU COULD KISS ME at the NATIONAL THEATRE

From Rich's write up on OR YOU COULD KISS ME as part of the Night Light R+D

"Dave,

It has been a good long while since I have left the theatre with the feeling I have now and I am trying to come to grips with it. Its exciting.

I have written a report about all aspects of ’Or you could kiss me’ at the National theatre and I think that overall I loved it.

I thought you might like some of these thoughts for the Blog. Remember I am not a reviewer, I wouldn’t dare ‘star’ this work, although if you forced me I would give it at least a star more than Warhorse. Ooh, controversial… get over it Dave.

SPOILER ALERT
‘Of you could kiss me’ is a puppet masterpiece, it is, the two leading gentleman puppets are fluid, elegant and overflowing with emotion. A wonderful achievement and that is where our comparison to the Nationals other recent puppet work ends. Warhorse this is not, and I am pleased about that.

This is a huge achievement of puppetry and storytelling for an older audience. That in itself makes it a must see, this is a major UK venue performing puppetry for adults, using a huge range of devising techniques, playing with convention and ultimately creating something really unique.

I was with the story for the first two thirds, and while the final scenes had some moments which I found engaging and moving I feel pretty strongly that this was unfinished business. This felt like an experiment, I haven’t read anything about the show, I try not to before seeing puppet work, so often the best bits are given away in a ploy to sell the show. It felt like its answering questions, and in that sense I suppose it feels a little like a rehearsal room. Is it asking ‘Can we tell an adult story with puppets and make the audience really feel something?’ In a way I think we already know that to be possible, we know how a puppet encourages the imagination to project a face or a memory onto it, we know we can jump through time and be free of ’reality’ a puppet can swim and fly and die and age and shrink and do anything. I have seen a puppet reduce an audience to floods of tears, we know that can happen, so what was this really about? ‘Can we make puppets realistic?’ Any puppet moments which seemed insincere were the fault of the writing. I believed the puppets almost completely. The rehearsal room feel, free from boundaries in time and space is really comfortable, characters flow through the actors and always drive the story forward. A narrator jumps on the mic to conduct the ensemble, props are handed in and out of the space. It is clear we are all here for the story, and that is very strong… So why use puppets?

I think this is something I am grappling with going into the design stages of our Romeo and Juliet. Instinctively I know that it is right to use puppets but logically I cant find a reason.

And I think that is the point. We do it because we can, because the imagination is so rich and brilliant that we want to flex it and stretch it as much as we can. We want to spark it and charm it. There is a moment in ‘Or you could kiss me’ when one of the puppets swims into the space. It is quite simply one of the most glorious things I have ever seen on stage. The movement, the focus, the puppetry, the shift of atmosphere and the sheer beauty of it will be with me always. Other moments, where the puppets are held frozen in time are brilliantly executed, the faith in the puppets at times like this is so apparent that you can feel cogs turning in the heads of the audience. We are given time to think of when our eyes had locked across a table at a pivotal point in our lives, the puppets’ completely still faces allow us to imagine and wonder what is really going on in the minds of the characters and sometimes I would have been happy with silence over choral narration. There is also a very notable squash sequence and a perfectly made, brilliantly controlled (but ultimately distracting and crowd pleasing) dog. Handspring are clearly world class. We want it to work so much. But for some reason it doesn’t entirely.

There is something really beautiful about the silence of these puppets. It’s as if the characters never speak, as if the entire show is a telepathic conversation between our two leads, in shared glances and difficult silences. I don’t think that was the intention but it’s a thought.

The story, as I mentioned is a little strange, I am certainly no writer, but I found myself frowning from time to time. It all seemed a little too obvious and we were all primed for a twist, a shock, something huge. From the off the ensemble refuse to talk about certain events, but I suppose the problem is that those events are already obvious to us because of where we were in the present. Its like the story is saying ‘don’t tell, don’t tell’ and we’ve already been told. Maybe I was missing something, and yes the events that are reflected upon are hugely important to the characters and therefore important to us, but I don’t think they warrant or require the mystery driven home from dialogue like “He’s not ready yet” “Don’t say it” all the way through…
I wont talk to much about the story, it’s the staging and realisation that is dividing my opinion. I enjoyed listening to the story I just didn’t get involved enough.

I will note the puppeteers. I found them fascinating from the off. Most of the time they were engaged with the puppets, crawling and sprawling about the stage with black suits and no shoes- an interesting decision.

They spend a great deal of time trying to get out of the way, a tough job playing in the round, they work hard to share the puppets with as much of the audience as possible but there are so many of them! Sometimes it is hard to feel the intimacy of the couple as they are so clearly surrounded by half a dozen men. The final moments are almost completely obscured and I really wanted to be with them right at the end. As a rather conventionally Greek chorus the puppeteers provide thoughts and memories throughout, they play various characters, in various accents, a device seen a lot in devised ensemble theatre. What I found especially fascinating was the relentless wandering around. All theatre directors I have ever come across have told me only move when you need to move, only go when you have to go, even if it is something trivial, to move away from a character you dislike, to answer a phone, to make a point… This ensemble wandered around relentlessly and it drove me crazy, they just walked around, always moving always shifting, it went against all of my desire to focus and listen in to the scene. It really unnerved me and distracted me. I would love to ask them why they did it. It was so deliberate, so choreographed, pointed ‘dancer toes’ were on show all over the place because of the lack of shoes, it was almost like an exercise in animal behaviour sometimes. Bloody fascinating.

I can honestly say I have never believed human puppets in the way that I did tonight, but I think if you take the puppets away this is a distinctly average play. I really need to learn how to make the puppets feel incidental in Romeo and Juliet, the audience should accept them as real but not rely on them for all the entertainment. Is there such thing as a show with puppets or is it always a puppet show. There must be compromise, I think Warhorse is a puppet show and His Dark Materials was a show with puppets, but that was for family audiences, so much to think about…

Seeing work is so important, i learnt so much today! I love the theatre, I love the National, I really enjoyed my evening and therefore ‘Or you could kiss me’ is a success in my book!"

Rich has also written notes on Burn My Heart, the new Trestle 'unmasked' show which should appear here soon.

Coming this week.

Sarah's notes on Designers
Toms review of Frantic Assembly and Kneehigh (what a week-cant wait)
Philippa's notes on the music of Romeo and Juliet.