The Harbinger

Company: La Boite Indie and Dead Puppet Society
Venue: Roundhouse Theatre, Kelvin Grove, Brisbane
Dates: To 30 July 2011

The Harbinger is a story within a story of a city in turmoil, civil war, fear and panic rule the people and of eternal hope and salvation at the same time.

An old man watches through the window of his ruined bookshop as the city tears itself apart, until one night a frightened little girl takes refuge in his shop and they become unlikely companions.

As the play progresses and the old man accepts the little girl into his ‘life’, he tells the little girl a story, about a man who is coming to save the city. The little girl finds her own hope and possible salvation in this hero and shares it with the city outside by ripping out pages of the book and nailing them to lamp posts so that everyone will know of his coming.

I have to say from the outset that this play was not my cup of tea, however I can appreciate the enormous amount of work and effort it has taken a dedicated team to put this together. The old man was an oversize puppet, worked by three people all of whom were dressed the same (as you would expect from puppeteers) with a ghoulish style of makeup. These three brought the old man to life so cleverly, they became part of the background, and you failed to notice them after a while.

The size of the puppet was purposely done so as to create the illusion of an adult playing a child so that she did indeed appear to be child size in his presence. The girl was played by Kathleen Iron and the Old Man was manipulated by Elizabeth Millington, Anna Straker and Giema Contini.

Kathleen Iron was incredible in her portrayal of the girl, expressive with emotions and body language, as the play has no speech at all, only narration from another storyteller every so often.

The background flat which was a wall of the bookshop with a window also became the pages of the story from which the old man was telling the little girl with animation using puppetry, and projected images. The little girl not only was told the story the old man kept close to his heart, but also learnt about the old man’s life story and his demons. This was cleverly done by use of the screen to project animated sketch drawings to show his life with his wife and what had happened to her.

I found the whole story a tad bleak and dark. The images that flashed furiously on to the screen every time the scene with his wife was played where she was bleeding and dying I had difficulty comprehending, but put them down to the demons the old man was going through as he watched his beloved wife slowly die. The music that accompanied the play was also very dark and dirgey and the beat I found a bit overwhelming mainly because of its volume.

The imagery that captured me as the story pans out is of a Christ-like saviour coming to the ravaged, panic-stricken city to cast out the megalomaniac who, with his army of soldiers, has taken over. The other side is the megalomaniac himself, who through his soldiers has warred a campaign of fear and violence against the city, bespoke of a Hitleresque character.

And still yet, you had the city itself, so fearful of one another, too frightened to trust and band together to cast this man to save themselves, latches on to a story in the hope that someone else is coming to do it for them, to such an extent that an act of truthfulness ends in demise.

This is a play you need to see for yourself and make up your own mind. I think it will speak differently to everyone who does see it.

Eric Scott

To read more of Eric Scott's theatre reviews, check out Absolute Theatre.