Review: ‘Puppet Up!’ melds improv, puppets and laughs at The Montalbán
- Anita W. Harris
- 1 hour ago
- 3 min read
You don’t have to have grown up with “Sesame Street” or “The Muppet Show” to enjoy Brian Henson’s “Puppet Up!” — an improv show with puppets who do whatever the audience tells them with the help of their talented handlers.
And I mean anything. A recent show at the Montalbán Theatre — where the show continues through next weekend — began with one puppet doing a crossword puzzle while getting a rather vigorous colonoscopy from another puppet helping them answer clues.
In other pieces, a weird movie being filmed at Boston Harbor with a talking baby randomly turned noir; a surreal James Bond opening number was made funnier by male dismemberment; a fan slowly blew the underpants off a female backup singer during the song “Windy.”
The puppets perform on stage in front of a camera and are projected onto two large screens, sometimes with digital embellishment. At the same time, we see six skilled puppeteers dressed in black working the puppets’ mouths and hands while brilliantly improvising according to audience suggestions.
The puppeteers’ sheer talent and enthusiasm for what they do — along with that of perky MC Patrick Bristow — is palpable, making the show immediate and immersive and easy for the audience to respond wholeheartedly, even for repeat offenders since no two performances are alike.
As skilled as those puppeteers are, when Brian Henson — son of OG television puppeteer Jim Henson — takes the stage, he brings a whole other level. From crisply yet naturally delivering puppet speech to deftly moving those puppets relative to the camera to create depth and motion on screen, one can feel his father’s influence.
Brian begins the show sharing how his father wasn’t especially drawn to puppets growing up in Mississippi but rather to the mediums of radio and then television. Moving to Maryland and taking a puppeting class in college, along with future wife Jane, soon led to brief television segments in which puppets dominated the screen.
The cast performs some of Jim’s classic pieces during the show, including the genius “Business Business,” in which love-and-peace puppets beat out soulless business-minded puppets talking about stock options, until they, too, end up gravitating toward capitalism. Another sung piece ironically calls out loving someone’s face when beneath it is a creepy and ravenous monster.
These sketches are not only a moving tribute to Jim Henson but add reflective depth to the otherwise non-stop hilarity of the show. One wonders if a spinoff show could be developed —perhaps called “Puppet On!” — performing sketches that are both funny and thoughtful, and yeah, still with some audience participation.
Because in this show, audience members not only shout out improv ideas but some even get to interact with the puppets. A couple is invited onstage for puppets to recreate their first date while they ring a bell or buzzer for what is portrayed accurately or not. Another member is invited to actually operate a puppet after being quickly coached, to obviously hilarious effect.
Though they can look a little like us, and inherently talk like us, puppets are allowed to do and say and be things most humans can’t or won’t in our everyday lives, which may be part of their appeal. “Puppet Up!” not only celebrates that magical freedom but generously allows us to participate in it and lose ourselves for a while. One imagines Jim Henson wryly smiling.
“Puppet Up!” continues through Aug. 9 at the Ricardo Montalbán Theatre, 1615 Vine St., Los Angeles, with shows Friday at 8 p.m., Saturday at 3 p.m. and 7 p.m., and Sundays at 5 p.m. Tickets can be purchased by visiting PuppetUp.com or TheMontalban.com. Run time is 2 hours, including intermission.