Have A Nice Day

Wednesday night at the Berkeley Street Theatre, I went to see a puppet show by Old Trout Puppet Workshop called Ignorance. Dominated by an arch of giant bones with stretched canvas between the curves and a large bonfire, 3 performers dressed in long johns and a jutting horn switched back and forth between two eras: our modern world and a paleolithic Adam and Eve living inside a cavern trying to make sense of a scary world.

A narrator, who throughout the play mused about neurochemistry, brain function, and human qualities, posed the overarching question: Why are we usually not happy? Would we be happier living in a more primitive, less "complex" state? The modern humans, a group of puppet men and women with jowly faces, which can in turn be a fresh-faced child, a middle-age everyman, or a wizen retiree, didn't seem to be. Their puppet bodies, with hands and feet by the actors, shuffled through unsastifying lives. Their pursuit of happiness, represented by a yellow smiley balloon, often ended in gruesome but hilarious deaths. The ancient humans, composed of more found object parts: stones for faces, sticks for hands, didn't have much luck either; they fought over scarce resources and were bewildered by an incomprehensible and hostile world.

The show fared best with the imaginative puppets and props, each having the look of a well-loved and used creation. The humour was slapstick but fun: the unintelligible humming of Eve morphed into My Heart Will Go On, a Charlie Chaplin-esque turn on a factory floor, a drawn-out battle with a wooly mammoth. It was obvious the performers had a blast inhabiting their roles. The pseudo-scientific attempt at profundity by the voice-over didn't click and the glib wisdom ("be happy because you're special") was eye-rolling. Watching this show at its zaniest fun the clear conclusion should have been: we are happiest when we are creative and playful.