Love comes with strings attached in Greg Doran’s tragic romance. First performed 22 years ago, this enchanting production of Shakespeare’s great poem of unrequited love is now tenderly narrated by Simon Russell Beale. With masterful puppetry and a playful air of seduction, there’s no wonder this conjuring of Venus’s pursuit of the handsome Adonis has had so many lives. Like love – and heartbreak – its magic is timeless.
No breath is wasted with these cheeky puppets, wooden in material only, designed and created by Lyndie Wright. A raunchy Venus weeps and begs as the gorgeous, occasionally petulant Adonis rejects her advances, more interested in hunting than in love. Venus moves with such ease, you hardly see the team of puppeteers holding her arms as she hurls herself down at Adonis’s feet, or curling her legs as she wallows in self pity. The five puppeteers swim around their characters, handing over control of a head and taking up a hand with surgical skill. Marionettes, shadow, rod, Bunraku and other puppets are used to build this ethereal world of miniature beauty – plus the exquisite ugliness of one angry, snuffly boar.
