CAMT Reviews

• New Yorker, June 28, 2007, Once There Was A Village

• New York Times, November 4, 2007, Hamlet

• The Village Voice, January 30th, 2007, Once There Was A Village

• New York Times, June 9, 2006 Bass Saxophone

• New York Times, April 18, 2003, Don Juan

• United Press International, March 8, 2002, Hamlet

• New York Times, December 28, 2001, A Christmas Carol, Oy Hanukkah, Merry Kwanzaa

• Louis Lopardi, July 23, 2001, Richard III

• Talkin' Broadway, July 17, 2001, Richard III

• The Dance Insider, April 11, 2001, Prose of the Transsiberian and of Little Joan of France

• New York Times, March 31, 2000, Johannes Dokchtor Faust

• New York Times, October 22, 1999, The Fisherman's Clever Daughter

• New York Times, January 15, 1999, Rusalka, the Little Rivermaid

• Time Magazine, November 17, 1997, The Czechoslovak-American Marionette Theatre

United Press International

Czech marionette theater takes on 'Hamlet'

By FREDERICK M. WINSHIP

Published 3/8/2002

March 7 (UPI) -- The Czech Republic is the world capital of puppetry and its legendary marionette magic is being shared with American audiences by the New York-based Czechoslovak-American Marionette Theater, currently performing  "Hamlet" at Manhattan's Jan Hus Playhouse.

The production directed by Vit Horejs, to run through March 17, reflects a new  trend in Czech puppetry. It shatters the illusion of traditional marionette  theater, with invisible puppeteers pulling the strings, by having the puppeteers  on stage as human actors performing opposite their wooden counterparts. Sticklers for the old style of marionette theater probably will not like it, but  Horejs' interpretation of Shakespeare's tragic masterpiece brings a breath of  fresh air to an art that has too long been relegated to the status of  entertainment for children. This is adult theater that children can also enjoy, especially when they can sit on pillows at the edge of the stage as they do at  Jan Hus.

Gone is the inhibiting miniature theater on whose stages hand‑held puppets and  string- operated marionettes have been performing since itinerant European  showmen set up permanent theaters in the 18th century. The whole stage at Jan  Hus Playhouse is used for "Hamlet" with an open gazebo and a stepladder as its  only props.

Four actors, two men and two women, manipulate the marionettes, which come in  two sizes-- 12 in the standard 26-inch size and 50 miniatures. They carry them  around the stage, sometimes using their hands to raise a puppet arm or turn a  puppet head and dumping them on the floor or hanging them on the gazebo when  they are not in use.

There is not much subtlety or refined technique in the actors' use of strings,  and only one of the characters in the production-- a court jester who walks  jauntily and gestures vehemently-- really comes to life. When Hamlet bestows  licentious kisses on Ophelia, it is the actors who kiss, not the marionettes. Once the viewer gets used to this new approach to marionette theater, "Hamlet"  in a condensed puppet version first performed in Prague in the 1920s is most  enjoyable, with all the memorable lines included and the soliloquies set to  music. It ends with a vision of puppet angels, the very flight that bore the  ill-fated Danish prince to his rest.

The marionettes visually fit their roles with the exception of Hamlet, who looks  more like a middle-aged roué than a teenage student. The king and queen are broadly caricatured as are the rest of Elsinore's  courtiers, but Ophelia appears to be from a foreign race-- taller, more  delicately sculptured, and of doll-like countenance. It doesn't help that the  actors, dressed in black, look nothing like the characters they occasionally  assume.

The bearded, 51-year-old Horejs is one of the actor-marionettists. The others  are Deborah Beshaw, Theresa Linnihan and Charley Hayward, who is a little too  old for the role of Hamlet but really puts his heart into it. Ben Seessel  composed the songs for the production and John Bowen is at the keyboard.  Costumes are credited to Magdalena Vavakova. Most of the marionettes were found in 1989 by Prague-born Horejs in a large  cache of puppets in a trunk in the attic of Jan Hus Playhouse, part of a Czech  ethnic center housed in a former church. There was no clue as to who had left  them there or to whom they belonged, so he refurbished the antique  lindenwood-sculptured figures and costumed them anew. Thus was born the Czechoslovak-American Marionette Theater, now in its 12th  season as an English‑speaking company.

It replaced an earlier marionette company that had thrived at the Jan Hus  Auditorium for the pleasure of Czech immigrants until just before World War II. Horejs' company has visited the Czech Republic, performing in both Prague and  Pilsen, and toured the United States, Canada, Europe and Asia. Puppetry is one of the oldest theatrical forms with roots in pre-history in  Africa, Europe and Asia, where stick and shadow puppetry is a highly developed  art.

It persisted in Czechoslovakia during the Nazi and Communist regimes, though  considered a subversive art form because it could be used for political satire.  Its most popular proponent as an art form in the United States in recent times  has been the Jim Henson Puppet Theater, which originated the Muppets on  television.

Copyright (c) 2002 United Press International