BOB BROWN PUPPETS’ CARNIVAL OF THE ANIMALS
nytheatre.com review by Hope Cartelli
August 15, 2003
When I was taking music appreciation classes back in elementary
school (we’re talkin’ mid-1980s here), my teachers’ efforts did
not enlighten or entertain me half as much as Bob Brown Puppets’
adaptation of Camille Saint-Saens’ Carnival of the Animals.The friendly narrator, who introduces himself as Todd Robbins, along with two puppeteers (the precise and energetic Krista Brown Robbins and Peter Brown) and a host of foam-bodied creatures great and small, encourages the audience to pay close attention with both eyes and ears to the simultaneously sweet, humorous and beautiful music of Saint-Saens. It is explained early on that Saint-Saens composed the Carnival pieces as a means of providing interesting fodder for his young students’ music lessons.
Clocking in at a toddler-friendly 45 minutes, the piece opens in a child’s bedroom replete with toybox, drawing easel, and small piano. From here, our guide Todd introduces us to the puppet Nicky, a wonderfully larger-than-life-size, sweet-natured little boy who likes to practice tickling the ivories before bedtime (his favorite exercise is Saint-Saens’ "The Pianist") and will only fall asleep to the strains of Carnival.
It is when Nicky is in full slumber that the bedroom becomes center stage for Saint-Saens’ animals and Todd’s observations on what instruments play the role of each. The audience is treated to a donkey with a violin "hee haw," a cat hunting a clarinet-voiced cuckoo, and a school of fish in an underwater paradise primarily created with a harp.
There are also numerous fantastical, imaginative interpretations of the music, including a majestic figure-skating swan (who seems to be saying "Eat your heart out, Disney on Ice!" with every triple lutz), a bedside table that transforms into an elephant, a magician kangaroo and—my personal favorite—a ballerina turtle dancing to what Todd describes as one of Saint-Saens’ fruitful attempts at a "musical joke": a wittily slowed-down can-can.
Bob Brown Puppets successfully excites the young ones in the audience with Saint-Saens’ music and magical puppetry. Their greatest success, though, is that they excite the adults as well. If you have a child to bring along, do so, but don’t shy away if you don’t.
