New York Theater: This elaborate, tuneful puppet musical doesn’t just tell the story of the journey of Kim Pham from Vietnamese “hometown girl” riding a water buffalo to young romantic in Saigon to war refugee “boatperson” to mother of four sons in Houston, Texas. It threads the tale with Vietnamese history and mythology, populates it with elephants, lions, dragons and demons, presents it as shadow puppetry and a contemporary downtown spin on traditional Vietnamese water puppetry (complete with a stage-wide pool of water), and accompanies it with sixteen songs from rock to pop to country – all in 60 minutes. It’s a lot to take in: clever and colorful, but also crowded and confusing.
2 comments:
These puppets created for “The Magnificent Ms. Pham” are absolutely beautiful. Looking just at the images provided in this article, the choice of rougher shapes create a sense of abstraction that aligns with puppetry as a form of storytelling. A good example is the first photo where the figure’s hands and feet are still recognizable as those appendages, but they are more blocky than realistic. This keeps an allusion to the process in which the puppets were created, because you can see many of the sharp edges of each plane where the material was carved. This closely mirrors that suspension of disbelief that is required for puppetry. Obviously, these puppets are not realistic people walking across the stage, but there is still that feeling of character that is created through the puppeteer’s movements. In this same way, the blocky shapes create surfaces for the puppeteer to suggest bodily movement, while not having to articulate each knuckle and finger.
This puppet show almost seems experimental in a way. The storytelling does sound interesting, and overall, puppetry is a special skill. I think I would get a bit distracted, though. Don't get me wrong, the puppets are really cool, and so is the mini set. I just think there would be a lot happening for me to focus. The fact that this happens in 60 mins plus the variety and numbers of songs seems like a lot. Another thing that would distract me would be the puppets. I know they are not the ones to look at in a puppet show, but when they are standing right behind everything, I feel like I would notice the slight movements and get pulled from the story. I do think it is cool that there are actual vocalists rather than pre-recorded tracks. It seems that it would really bring you into it and set the tone.
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