Last Friday I took my eldest daughter and nieces (6, 7 and 10) to see Spare Parts Puppet Theatre’s latest major production, Hometown.
Unbeknownst to me this was their first puppet experience, and boy were we in for a treat.
From the outset it was clear that this was going to be a commanding performance. Not surprising considering the production team have been working solidly for two years to bring the magic of Hometown to the stage, and this particular show – a world premiere – marks two decades of the Spare Parts team’s collaboration with celebrated local author-illustrator Shaun Tan.
Previous adaptations include The Arrival, Tales from Outer Suburbia, Rules of Summer, and Aqua Sapiens. Except this production is an adaptation of a book that’s yet to hit the printers.
And for the first time, Spare Parts has given this tradition a musical twist, blending puppetry with original songs.
Shaun Tan has accrued a list of accolades as long as your arm. Among those, impressively, include an Academy Award, several Hugo Awards, multiple Children’s Book Council of Australia ‘Picture Book of the Year’ awards, and an Astrid Lindgren Memorial Award – the holy grail of prizes for children’s literature.
As an Australian artist with mixed heritage, his works often deal rather poignantly with themes like loss and alienation.
And Hometown fits within this oeuvre perfectly.
From the first notes, the audience is taken on a musical journey through an alien landscape by the show’s protagonist – a young girl.
There’s not a whiff of family resemblance between her and her immediate family members: a sun goddess-like mother with heroic hair; a dalek/‘Lost in Space’ robot hybrid father whose bleep bloops are lost in translation; and a conjoined pinwheel trio of kangaroo-like older brothers.
Her world is full of giant sand crab duels, and food fights over alien entrails: “I’ve sucked out all the bile for you because I know you don’t like that part.”
And yet, her world is strangely familiar, and the audience quickly falls in love with the quirky cast of characters.
So, when an astronaut boy with a mission literally falls from the sky and throws her world and everything she thought she knew about her life into chaos, it’s the human who seems foreign to the audience.
“Ultimately, Hometown invites you to ponder what it means to belong, to question what it is to be ‘normal’, and to discover your own identity — no matter what other people think,” Shaun Tan explained.
I can’t stress enough how well the performers – Bec Bradley, Nick Pages-Oliver, and Amberly Cull – have developed the minutiae of their puppets’ physical idiosyncrasies. The suspension of disbelief was almost instantaneous.
Credit also goes to puppet designer Leon Hendroff and fabricators A Blanck Canvas who managed to elicit such pathos for painted foam figures.
And I found myself humming along to the tunes from the show on the way home – so kudos to composer Melanie Robinson, and the puppeteers again, who pre-recorded their own impeccable voices.
It was two thumbs up from all four of us – a truly magical experience that we won’t forget in a hurry.
And this mum/auntie thoroughly recommends the hour-long show to young and old alike. I personally haven’t enjoyed a ‘kids’ tale this much since Toy Story.
The Hometown season runs twice daily until next Saturday (January 25) at the Ellie Eaton Theatre in the Claremont Showground.
Pro-tip: there are also some hands-on puppetry activities in the room next door to the theatre that opens 45 minutes before each show.
