I saw the most incredible piece of theatre last night at Lakeside Arts in Nottingham.  Blind Summit’s The Table is in three parts, all with strikingly different styles of puppetry.  The final part (above) tells a story of epic proportions as four actors take it in turns to pull sheets of drawings out of a briefcase. Billed as a ‘French puppet show’ it has love scenes, car crashes, car chases, dream sequences, all relayed just with drawings, fake cigarettes, black polo necks and a swagger.  The actors move the papers with such fluidity and grace it’s like watching a storyboard come to life.

This kind of creativity really excites me, the kind that comes from constraint and simplicity. After a day spent immersed in an online world, with its obsession with text and fleeting exchanges, it was revitalising to be reminded of the power of pen and paper, and of live theatre.

I’ve started at the end, the show starts with this guy, a puppet made of cardboard and based on the principles of Japanese Bunraku puppetry.  It’s impossible to convey how life like he is through photographs, but in the hands of the three performers operating him, he is startlingly real.  He’s hilarious too, voiced by one of the puppeteers, he performs a kind stand up routine, that both illuminates the art of puppetry and breaks down the stereotypes we associate with puppetry.  ’Isn’t the puppet cute? Cute? Cute?, I’m a t**t’ he jokes,  ’I was conceived in the back of a sketch pad, after a drunken night’. But somehow, as he goes on, I also end up feeling moved, I know what you’re thinking, by a puppet, but, he does it, he makes me feel sad, cross, frustrated and laugh out loud lots.

He’s a puppet with attitude, ‘a rebel puppet’ who had the audience laughing throughout. He promises ‘epic puppetry on a biblical scale, on top of the table’. He threatens to tell the tale of the last 12 hours of Moses’ life, but he never gets there, becoming too distracted by explaining the principles of puppetry, chastising the puppeteers and demonstrating extreme puppetry.   He is floored by an imaginary running machine, throws pelvic thrusts at a woman in the front row and demonstrates ballet in ways so utterly lifelike it makes you, as Blind Summit promise, ‘think afresh about your own body, the power of movement and the fragility of life’

For me it was a much needed hour and ten minutes out of normal life, a burst of creativity that totally revitalised and refocussed me.  I haven’t even mentioned the second section, a ballet of disembodied heads, top marks for special effects, very slick.

The production received four star reviews from, amongst others, The Telegraph, The Guardian and The Scotsman.  It was awarded a fringe first and The Guardian’s pick of the fringe at the Edinburgh festival.  Blind Summit continue to tour this production, tour dates here.  Catch it if you can.

The next production I’m going to at Lakeside Arts is Thirsty by Paper Birds.  It’s all about our nation’s obsession with alcohol.  Amanda from The Ana Mum Diary will be my guest.

Images copyright - Blind Summit