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T HE VA N C O U V E R C O U R I E R F R I D AY, A P R I L 3 0 , 2 0 1 0
KEEP VANCOUVER
theatre
Puppet show gives adults something to chew on
Bitten by Tooth Fairy
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The Tooth Fairy
At the Cultch until May 1 Tickets: 604.251.1363 www.thecultch.com Reviewed by Jo Ledingham
At the risk of getting children’s advocates on their high horses, The Tooth Fairy is almost too good for kids. It’s a remount of a 2002 Old Trout Puppet Workshop production, and it’s aimed at kids from seven to 107, but it’s full of the Old Trout’s distinguishing features: glorious language (“Go forth, beak and claws, my plumages,” urges Grandfather to his rare birds); dark humour (just when things look like they can’t get any worse, they do); and irony (as a boy, Grandfather sold all his teeth to the Tooth Fairy and then bought a boat so his family could catch fish, which, because he had no teeth, he couldn’t eat). And there’s always the overriding sense of doom: “Nothing lasts forever. Your teeth will fall out. It’s inevitable,” warns whitewhiskered, toothless Grandfather. The kids will love it, anyway. After the show I asked a beautiful, curly haired youngster who looked about three or four, if the show had been scary. “No,” was the perky reply, “I knew it was pretend.” What sort of an idiot was I?
But grownups will love this show more than the kids, and they shouldn’t stay away because this is the last of the Cultch’s Family Series. The Tooth Fairy is based on the first book in the series “Preposterous Fables for Unusual Children,” written and illustrated by Judd Palmer, one of the founding puppeteers with the Old Trouts, which originated in 1999 in Calgary. This production is directed by Pete Balkwill, another in the trio of founders (and unforgettable as Don Juan in 2009’s The Erotic Anguish of Don Juan). The Tooth Fairy was originally performed by longtime Old Trouts, but this production features five new performers. They’re terrific, and it’s hard to imagine a finer Abigail than Kyla Read (a graduate of Studio 58). This Abigail, so the story goes, had “awe-striking, spectacular teeth,” and her life was as perfect as her teeth. Her only sorrow was that her old geezer of a grandfather wouldn’t let her out to play. “The world is toothy,” he warned. But Abigail got into her grandfather’s old boat (a tiny thing that Read wears around her shoulders and paddles with her puppet hands), took his helmet and harpoon and “snuck off into the night” to have tooth-threatening misadventures, including one with Captain Bleak who can’t wait to pull her “chompers” and use her for whale bait. Continued next page