Theatre review: Burst the Box

"THIS is your puppetry pizza!" yells the annoying guy in a dressing gown, one of our two hosts for the evening; and he speaks more truth than he knows, in that what he is about to serve up is mushy, half-baked and tasteless, and looks as if no-one involved really gave a damn.

The idea is that plenty of different experiences are going to be piled on top of our theatrical crust, during this one-hour compilation show put together for the Traverse Autumn Festival by a half-dozen puppeteers from the Puppet Lab of Leith.

The evening starts well, bursting out of the black box of Traverse Two with an opening sequence in the bar.

A little stage is unveiled featuring the Cafe Monique, where our gorgeous hostess – face and hands of a woman, body of a curvaceous female puppet in a checked apron – entices a male audience member to stir up her chocolate brownie mix, and promises us goodies at the end of the show.

From there on, though, it's all downstairs and downhill, as we descend into Traverse Two. There's a tiny toy circus, ineptly presented. There are lots of feebly-scripted oven-glove puppets, manipulated so that they look good only on a big television screen that dominates the stage. And there's a fine lifesize blues-singing puppet called Miss Marzipan, but even she is presented with more enthusiasm than skill.

The point of all this is impossible to detect; if the Traverse Autumn Festival is about challenging the boundaries of theatre, the only boundary being breached here is the one between professional performance and beginners messing about for their own amusement.

The chocolate brownies were good, though; and I felt a little sorry for the lovely Monique, the only really polished performer of the night, as she stood at the door of the theatre, handing out her last few delicious morsels.

JOYCE MCMILLAN