To be or not to be: that is the puppetry

Puppets don’t bleed. At least not real blood. This anatomical axiom means the violence in “Famous Puppet Death Scenes” is safe enough for children -- with some reservations.

Children will no doubt find a lot to enjoy in this darkly comic play, which ends its three-night engagement this evening at the Samueli Theater at the Orange County Performing Artscenter. But adults will probably enjoy it even more. Beneath the amusing puppet antics churns a mature existentialism: Why do we die? Is it necessary? What is eternity? You might say this is a play that prepares you for that doctorate in puppet metaphysics that you’ve always wanted. An intellectual puppet show? Yes, but don’t let that scare you away. “Famous Puppet Death Scenes” knows how to mask its bevy of ideas in ways that are visually stunning and endlessly entertaining.

Produced by the Alberta, Canada-based Old Trout Puppet Workshop, the play is neatly divided into 22 “scenes,” each an excerpt from a notable puppet-theater classic. Of course, none of these classics really exists -- the show is a faux anthology that culls from an imagined theatrical canon. For example, in an episode called “The Feverish Heart by Nordo Frot: Act 1, Scene 3,” an unsuspecting hand puppet falls victim to a giant fist that comes crashing down from out of nowhere onto its cute little head.

The show moves swiftly from one visual punch line to another. Two German puppets must choose between doors labeled “Ja” and “Nein” as part of a diabolical game show in “Das Bipsy und Mumu Puppenspiel by Freulicher Friedrich: Episode 43 ‘Bipsy’s Mistake.’ ” (The segment titles alone are priceless.) Later, an innocent street urchin turns the tables on his bloodthirsty mugger in “The Beast of Muggditch Lane by August Stainbrook: Act 1, Scene 1.”

Performed almost entirely in a specially constructed wooden proscenium, “Famous Puppet Death Scenes” is a puppet show that interrogates the artifice of puppetry, which is to say that it’s a self-reflexive play. In one brilliantly inventive scene, a pair of marionette legs dangling from the ceiling suggests a recent suicide. But we soon learn through a macabre series of events that things are hardly what they seem and that fooling the viewer is an important, if not fundamental, part of puppetry.

The play’s most memorable scenes aren’t necessarily the goriest or most violent, but those that quietly ponder what it means to be a puppet as well as the person behind it who gives it life. In a scene titled “The Cruel Sea by Thorvik Skarbarg: Hour 14,” the corpse of an old mariner slowly decomposes before our eyes, each body part floating away to reveal the wooden core beneath the costume and paint. This simple tableau provides a chilling X-ray into the heart of puppetry. The art form, it seems to say, consists merely of inanimate objects brought together by dexterous hands and the audience’s willingness to suspend disbelief.

Directed by Tim Sutherland, “Famous Puppet Death Scenes” provides so much visual stimulus that it’s easy to simply sit back and marvel. The democratic assembly of puppets includes wooden creations of all shapes and sizes. Much of the magic should be credited to the four puppeteers who perform the show -- Peter Balkwill, Mitchell Craib, Pityu Kenderes and Judd Palmer.

But the play’s real achievement isn’t visual but rather philosophical and even epistemological in nature. These puppets think deeply about death and the afterlife. They ponder, ruminate and even despair about the unknowable universe.

Odd as it may sound, these puppets often seem more recognizably human than the humans they are meant to imitate.

--

david.ng@latimes.com

--

‘Famous Puppet Death Scenes’

Where: Samueli Theater at the Orange County Performing Artscenter, 600 Town Center Drive, Costa Mesa

Ends: 8 p.m. today

Price: $25

Contact: (714) 556-2787

Running time: 1 hour, 15 minutes

--

On the Web

More photos online at latimes.com/arts.