BY SYLVIE WOODS, LEAD WRITER (NSW)
Pinocchio
Little Eggs Collective with The Clari Boys, directed by Julia Robertson, produced by Kendra Murphy
Sydney Fringe Festival
The Warehouse Stage One, 28 September
Little Eggs Collective and two members of The Clari Boys – Max Harris and Oliver Shermacher – buttoned up Sydney Fringe with an “imagined origin story” of Pinocchio.
In this interpretation of Carlo Collodi’s 1881 fairytale, director Julia Robertson and producer Kendra Murphy place Geppetto – the beloved, impoverished puppet-maker – into Mussolini’s fascist regime. In Geppetto’s imagination, five mischievous puppets are conjured as a distraction from the violent hegemony of Mussolini’s tenure. The puppets taunt and tease Gepetto through music, physical theatre and dance throughout the performance, which is completely abstract and without dialogue: a dreamlike enactment of Geppetto’s fancies.
Clarinettists Harris and Shermacher (puppets) chase Geppetto (Matthew Lee) about the stage, motivated by roguish flirtation or whimsy, whilst decorating the space with instrumental runs and trills to mirror their changing states. The fantasy also sees Grace Stamnas (puppet) springing gymnastically from table-top to floor, and Annie Stafford (puppet) taking on the physicality of a wind-up doll – and vocalising this classically. Increasingly, the puppets gambol, dance, and sing in unison until they all fall victim to the totalitarian cult in Geppetto’s mind: the individualist, spirited puppets of Geppetto’s musings have succumbed to the horrors of reality.
Nick Fry’s set is visually luxurious. Initially, a simple room with a table stages the follies of Geppetto’s mind. After the puppets succumb, the set opens to a deep stretch of space through which the bedevilled puppets march. This sudden, seemingly endless depth of space marries powerfully to the state’s possession of Geppetto’s imagination, as though it is swallowing the production whole. The would-be climactic visual moment of puppet Harris’ golden periphery outlined by the distant stage-light glow was lost by the placement of a crouching Geppetto in one of the final moments. Costume designer Ella Butler and Fry’s aesthetic collaboration was considered, harmonious, and effective.
The cast of puppets embellished the choreography with their specific talents. Laura Wilson is an expressive physical actor, Annie Stafford an excellent comic with a rich soprano and strong physical presence, and Grace Stamnas an excellent dancer. Shermacher contributes musical excellence to the performance; and Lee, who portrays the poor Geppetto, could not have been outdone, bringing a compelling, frenzied expressiveness to his role. However, it was Harris who, although new to theatre, lifts the group’s impact and emerges as visually magnetic; indeed seemingly in a single production mastering emotional expression through movement. Harris’ commitment to vulnerability and helplessness steers the disintegration of Geppetto’s fancies.
Pinocchio has a long history of attracting militants, politicians, writers, and theatre-makers to peruse its correlation to political meaning. Collodi’s 1881 abstraction of the rapscallion marionette Pinocchio in Storia di un burattino has been subjected to all keys of political revisions in its sequels, reviews, and revitalisations. Claimed as a vehicle for both fascist and Marxist agenda to allegorise control and reward according to these ideologies, the character of the fantastical puppet has come under countless ownerships and been betrayed, occupied, and exploited along with its nation.
While the production points to fascism through regime-friendly propaganda (Fry) and militarisation in choreography (Georgia Britt), a preoccupation with the carnivalesque drives the particulars of early 20th Century Italy into obscurity for most of the performance, and with it, any sense of how these rascallish figments have acted as a tonic for Geppetto.
While the various puppets shone technically, Geppetto the man was obscured, along with the details of this imagined origin story. Curious as it may be as a thematic experiment to contemporise the fairy tale’s origins, the situation required further justification.
The cast of puppets succeeded in a polished, flowing reverie: fantastical, far-fetched, beautiful, and cartoonish in movement. It must, however, be clearer to an audience how the details of Geppetto’s hallucinatory, fragmented visions (gymnastics, tricks, choral harmony, clarinets) are a response to his political fears, what specifically sobers him to his final, dark realisation, and how he will cope with it.
Pinocchio succeeded as a compelling visual and musical landscape. Little Eggs Collective emerges as a dynamic, daredevil team with a new and exciting theatrical approach. 
Did you know Sylvie interviewed The Clari Boys in our inaugural print issue? Find out more.
Images supplied.
