A fine showcase for the talents of Ronnie Burkett, the piece presents interlinked stories that center on a rooming house at the end of the world. For the most part told with marionettes, with a brief excursion into hand puppets, the stories’ central figure is Penny Plain, an elderly blind woman who has seen it all and is ready for what comes next. The work is by turns broadly satirical, darkly gothic (echoes of Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho, and stereotype-pushing farcical. There are three, maybe four, talking dogs: Hickory Sanchez, a chihuahua with an outsized ego and a sex drive to match, is a particular guilty pleasure.
Burkett’s puppets do things that you don’t expect marionettes to do, like walk with a Zimmer frame, or slouch unladylike in a chair, or engage in the gallows humor of cracking jokes about dog meat. Burkett keeps his two- and three-character scenes snapping with rapid cue pickups, so rapid that sometimes his voice characterizations are a bit blurred. His voice does him better service in monologues, as when we meet a milquetoast of a bank teller who breaks the rules and advises his favorite customer to withdraw all of her money, NOW.
The device of the rooming house, which enables all sorts of eccentrics to drop in (or barge in) wears a bit thin. But on the whole, it’s an enjoyable experience. Don’t bring the kids.
- Penny Plain, produced by Ronnie Burkett Theatre of Marionettes, created and produced by Ronnie Burkett, Kennedy Center Terrace Theater, Washington