PUPPETS ON DEMAND

Archipelago of Delight

Amherst, MA. - UMass -Rand Theater, April 26. - May 5. 2001

Director: Miguel Romero
Story: Harley Erdman, Miguel Romero
Composer, Musical Director: Christopher Haynes
Lyrics: Harley Erdman
Singer: Jenny Conley
Puppeteers: Sara Antion, Alcia Barnatchez, Jessica Burday, Bradford Landry, Timothy Matos, Christy Penney, Sarah Phykitt, Jennifer Tebo, Smith Vioselin
Choreography, Musical Staging: Daniella Sertz
Costume Designer: June Gaeke
Lightning Designers: "B"rendan Murray, Penny Remsen
Sound Machine: Audrey Chaney, Anna Frazier, Justin McClintock
Sound Machine Designer: Nick Keenan
Sound Engeneer: Justin McClintock
Musicians: George Arsenault, Mallets; Judy Bruneau, Drums; Christopher Haynes, Keyboards; Bruce Krasin, Woodwinds; Amy Marrs, Bass
Assistant Stage Managers: Kirsten Palmer, Erin Wood
Mask Sculptor: Sebastian Roser
Puppet Designers: Bradford Landry, Wesley Piermarini, Miguel Romero, Sebastian Roser, Schannon Weston


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Mediaval folklore and theology spoke of  Seven Deadly Sins:
Anger, Envy, Gluttony, Greed, Lust, Pride, and Sloth. These seven sinful behaviors were seen as "deadly" because they were the catalysts for more deustructive crimes and sins, including murder. It can be said that the desire lying behind each of these sins is not in itself; the sin lies in indulging the behavior to a point of excess. Chief among the Seven Deadly Sins in today's society are those related to excessive consumption: Greed, Gluttony, and Lust.
Archipelago of Delight uses music and puppetry to explore the "islandscapes" of desire and excess related to these three sins.
Miguel Romero, Director
Harley Erdman, Lyricist

Puppets' peccadilloes astound 

Review in the Daily Hampshire Gazette, Amherst
By Larry Parnass, Staff Writer  
Pictures by Michael Dubin

Thursday, May 3, 2001 -- (AMHERST) - Puppets can go places. Thursday on a stage at the University of Massachusetts, one will paddle a tiny canoe into a beam of light. Others will steal and kill. They'll eat until engorged. They'll find their erogenous zones and brazenly touch themselves.
When they go those places, we watch with a different kind of interest, for no hearts beat inside these creations. They can be dreams made manifest, then shrugged off at the same time.
"Archipelago of Delight" is a winner for lots of reasons and can satisfy different tastes in musical theater, even as it confounds. I found it a kooky but appealing experiment that is lifted high by many talents, particularly the singing of Jenny Conley.
The large single purple sheet that serves as its program at the Rand Theater may list more names than any recent UMass production.
Getting this surreal story onto the stage for two weeks (it resumes Thursday and concludes Saturday) can't have been easy for director Miguel Romero, who wrote the story with Harley Erdman. Christopher Haynes leads a talented quintet in a score he composed, with lyrics by Erdman.
The play opens with rich, lulling music, filled with vibes and pulsing notes from flutist Bruce Krasin. Conley appears on stage beside a hanging mask. We see that she resembles it. For the entire play, which is performed without an intermission, Conley is the only person we see.
She sings sweetly bluesy songs whose main message is to go ahead and bite the apple the serpent offers in Eden - and let one's senses and sensuality guide, even if they can run to regrettable excess.
Conley is likable and charming and showed a firm command of her difficult but wonderfully arresting hedonist anthems, in the performance I attended Saturday. While the piece knits her songs in with the madness the puppets are made to pursue - for they are like her alter egos, venturing down that sinful road - Conley's performance can be viewed as a feat unto itself, and a satisfying one at that.
Five people are credited with designing the puppets used, including Romero, and their work is performed by nine main puppeteers and four supporting puppeteers. The program lists another 13 "puppet makers" and Sebastian Roser gets his due as a "mask sculptor." Nearly to a person, that crew succeeded in making these puppets riveting to watch, though some passages could be tightened.
In three separate scenes, the puppets blunder into acts of greed, gluttony and lust.
The play's concept is loose enough for these scenes to feel their way along, with much humor and cleverness, as the puppeteers noodle about, devising ways for the characters to plumb their passions. They get rowdy and rough, as their animal instincts speak. (Next year, how about a "Lord of the Flies" with puppets?)
As Conley sings at one point, "Freedom is the island you've longed so long to see."
Freed from being people, the puppets go at it whole hog. Here, having created this special atmosphere, Romero and his team revel in it.
The puppets' scenes, which make up more than half the musical, are raw and ribald, with whiffs of vaudeville and slapstick. Of the many inventive large puppets used, one type's cleverness drew audible notice from patrons. These shielded puppeteers, all of whom are covered in black, scoot about on low wheeled seats, with the feet of their characters attached to their own. They can reach and gesture. Though not human, they're primed to make fun of us.