“Please endeavor to care as much as possible,” the program for the Old Trout Puppet Workshop’s “Famous Puppet Death Scenes” at D.C.’s Woolly Mammoth Theatre implores.
And so we shall.
The quirky Canadian troupe have set up their stately wooden puppet theater at the Woolly Mammoth stage, which had misleadingly advertised the stint with a poster showing a man with goggly Muppet-sized eyes with an axe in his head.
Old Trout is not only more subtle in its (literal) executions, its visual approach is much more old world, with carefully mottled characters that are a cross between antique puppets and folk art crabapple dolls.
Working in the deliciously macabre tradition that recalls everything from Edward Gorey (who has a volume on sale in the lobby) to the Monty Python animations by Terry Gilliam, the witty troupe trot out a couple dozen sardonic blackout scenes that largely end badly for its characters.
The most recurring figure in “Famous Puppet Death Scenes” is the grim, bald-headed star from something called “The Feverish Heart” by Nordo Frot. As he tries to sing opera, he is squashed by a giant fist of Fate. Repeatedly.
It’s Punch and Judy by way of an Alberta clipper.
From largely behind an authentic tiny-curtained puppet stage (flanked by two other windows), the Old Trout spins their grim tales with exquisitely devised little sets, balancing the slapstick and inevitable demise of the characters with a broader satire on the deadly seriousness of literature and theater.
The host is one Nathaniel Tweak, whose beaky nose and shock of hair suggests a starving Leonard Bernstein. In his professorial double-speak he introduces scenes , spouts philosophy (“We are all dying as we speak!”) and becomes increasingly needy as the hour rolls on.
The individual scenes, each from some made up text, vary widely. In “The Swede of Donnylargan” by Sir Walter Pill, an apparent suicide leads to more of the same, and a twist. In “The Ballad of Edward Grue” by Samuel Groanswallow, the title character’s mistake is wearing antlers in deer season.
Grim as these are, other scenes are simply giddy, such as a purported child’s show from Germany, “Das Pipsy and Mumu Puppenspiel” and the visually arresting but one note “Scaircase Scene” from “The Modern Age (Part 3)” by Eamon Scholoss.
It’s a change of pace when some of the puppeteers — Nicholas DiGaetano, Pityu Kenderes and Viktor Lukawski — show themselves. In a bit like “Why I Am So Sad” by Sally, they demonstrate just how much more expressive they can be than the ones at their fingertips.
We do hear their voices throughout, however when there isn’t some strange scratchy, retro foreign language soundtrack provided (shall we credit sound designer Mike Rinaldi?). And just about everything on display is a wonder, thanks to the troupe’s puppet creation, the costumes by Jen Gareau and Sarah Malik, and lighting by Cimmeron Meyer.
A relentless series of blackouts can be exhausting over time, and things do flag about the time when scenes start getting a tad more abstract.
One scene meant to skewer slow-moving tales of Scandanavian despair, turns out to be just as slow moving, “The Last Whale” offers a single visual joke; “Funeral Ritual of the Sugawara” well, less fun than Pipsy and Mumu.
Things pick up by the time the space people with faces of Johnny Depp show up. And there is payoff when something that fails to die in one scene, returns to do so in another.
There is a lyric quality to the craftsmanship of the Old Trout Puppet Workshop, and a yearning in the philosophical narration. It’s a work intended for those old enough to actually consider mortality on a regular basis, but kids who come will doubtless be enchanted by default. creating something that can’t be done with humans. And teens hip to the sardonic wallop of Monty Python will appreciate where it’s all coming from and will, like the adults, “care as much as possible.”
“Famous Puppet Death Scenes” by the Old Trout Puppet Workshop continues through Jan. 4 at the Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company, Washington, DC.