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THEATRE REVIEW
Published Friday, 11 November 2000
David Cuthbert, Theatre Reviewer
The
mind of "Uncle" Wayne Daigrepont is a vast repository of
cartoon
and kiddie-show trivia, with storage bins for bad puns, hokey jokes and
old songs. In other words, my kind of guy. Somewhere
between
the Cartoon Channel, vaudeville and Nickelodeon, lies the Land of Uncle
Wayne. In his current puppet show, "The Bepuzzled Pilgrim", he is
aided by a human cartoon named Vatican Lokey whose eyes roll
around
in their sockets like marbles. Lokey sings loudly and keeps up a
nimble line of impudent, improvised patter. Lokey plays Xavier, a
pilgrim
who wants to put the first Thanksgiving dinner on the table ("I'm
thinking
Thursday"), but doesn't know what it should be. The kids in
the
audience, of course, tell him. Then, in order to hunt up his main
course, he needs to know what a turkey looks like, and they help him
out
there, too. Amid the kiddie (and some adult) participation
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are
numerous
jokey Lokey asides, such as "can you believe a grown man sat up
three
nights making that puppet?"
As he stalks the
wily "turpuppet", he meets a racoon who sings "Tenderly" (she's
"Rosemary
Cooney"); a leather-lunged undersea denizen ("Ethel Mermaid"); and a
sequined
fish I think they should call "Lana Tuna"*. There's also a turtle
who wandered in from another puppet show and a seal with a Santa cap:
yes,
a "Christmas seal"! The appearance of Squanto, the American
Indian,
cues the entrance of Ashley Thompson as "Little Feather", who
looks
exactly like one of Tex Avery's nubile cartoon cuties from the '40s and
can dance a mean Charleston. A framing device about a little girl who
can't
go to sleep includes the appearance of her Mom, or rather of Mom's arm,
a la "White Fang" and "Black Tooth", whose paws were the only parts we
saw of them on the old "Soupy Sales Show".
And so it goes,
for almost an hour. The kids had a good time, if one is to judge
by their eagerness to jump up and be part of the show, and there was
adult
laughter as well. I only wish Uncle Vatican had asked me if I
knew
where to find a turkey, because I've seen a few lately.
*We accepted
David's
suggestion, and the puppet now bears the name of "Lana Tuna."
Many
thanks to David Cuthbert!
-Porta-Puppet
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