PRESS REVIEWS FOR BUNK PUPPETS

“Reminds you what your imagination is for” -The SKinny ✭✭✭✭

Wed, 18 Aug 2010 10:37:16 +0100

It hardly appears the most stimulating prospect in this digital age to spend an hour in the company of a bloke, some junk and a white screen, but this odd little show literally spotlights the seriously weird Jeff Achtem who transforms the ancient art of shadow puppetry for a stunned and delighted contemporary crowd.
From the opening moment when he meanders onstage mumbling and fumbling like an amiable Mr Bean, Achtem captures the audience’s hearts and the occasional shoe (which he returns unmolested to the confused spectator after using it as a prop in a hilarious opening scene). He builds his first puppet with sticky tape, a balloon and wig then gets a big wow from the room when the projector beam turns the unpromising collection of junk into a bouncy, wiry old woman on the screen.
Achtem’s genius is imbuing these bizarre images with luminous personalities and creating hilarious scenarios, the funniest involving brain surgery, horse racing, domestic competitive chess and an inter-active kung-fu movie where a zen master shadow puppet takes on a member of the audience. He does all this while speaking only in murmurs, moans and grunts.
It might be the kind of entertainment your great granny enjoyed but Achtem gives his shadow puppets a contemporary and endearing spin creating a funny and magical show that reminds you what your imagination is for.

4 stars.

Edinburgh 2010 Fringe review by: Malcolm McGonigle
To read the original review on-line, click HERE.

“It’s hard to imagine a more entertaining. generous or inspirational show” -Fringe Review ✭✭✭✭✭

Sun, 15 Aug 2010 10:41:22 +0100

Low Down
Horses ride people, ninjas fight audience members and old teddy bears get an unexpected new lease of life as Jeff Achtem makes surreal shadow puppets from household junk before your eyes. Verbal communication takes a back seat as everything he can get his hands – and feet – on is used to create joyfully detailed scenes, though there’s plenty of referential humour and theatrical craft along the way.
Review
With the school summer holidays in full swing, Radio 4’s Today Programme recently hosted a debate on the subject of boredom. Is boredom on its way to extinction in the digital age, and if so should we be mourning it? Could we all benefit from a little more time with no DVD to watch, iPod to listen to or Facebook friend to poke?

This gorgeous one-man family show from Montreal demonstrates what wonders can ensue when you have excess time on your hands – and your feet. Jeff Achtem is a shadow puppeteer whose shapes are as exacting as his manner is casual. But where traditional, Eastern shadow puppetry is about exquisite paper models and clean lines, Achtem uses bits of domestic junk that he adapts in front of you on stage. Surveying his prop ‘cupboard’ – a washing line strung with rather sorry looking gloves and chopped up sleeves, and a floor dotted with a discarded teddy or the head of a mop, you’d never imagine what beautiful and believable, if always cartoonishly surreal scenes he could create with them.

So there are plenty of ‘ah!’ moments as, say, the rump of an upturned teddy bear that’s had its ears unceremoniously masking-taped back becomes, via the simple alchemy of lamp and screen, the head of a man undergoing a brain transplant (we did say surreal – we should say occasionally dark too, though that didn’t seem to bother the appreciatively gurgling toddler in the audience).

What makes this a beautifully crafted show instead of a series of shadow stunts is partly the pacing of these moments of realization, so that we have just forgotten about the shoe he takes from an audience member and adapts in the opening moments by the time it makes its screen debut. (Achtem rarely talks – he’s a sort of shy, tweed-clad Morph – but at such moments he does allow himself a muted little ‘yeaaaah!’ of mutual enjoyment.)

He’s got some sweet little jokes, too, about both the liberations and limitations of the form. ‘Black and…. Black’ he indicates of the pieces as two shadow spouses settle down to play shadow chess. ‘I’m not that good!’ Meanwhile an audience member is defeated in combat by a shadow ninja who has the advantage of being able to raise four limbs from the ground and walk up walls.

The coup de theatre involves him simultaneously using both hands and both feet in a ludicrously awkward feat of turning puppeteer contortionism. But just as memorable is his closing message: ‘remember, no matter how busy you are, there’s always time to play’. Finally, to show he’s serious about sharing, he sends light shapes dancing out from the screen and across the walls towards us. It’s hard to imagine a more entertaining, generous or inspirational family show. Pray for a little more boredom in your life and prepare to play.

5 stars.

Edinburgh 2010 Fringe review by: Bella Todd
To read the original review on-line, click HERE.

“One of the most inventive and quirky shows at the fringe” - FEST magazine ✭✭✭✭✭

Sun, 15 Aug 2010 10:34:05 +0100

With an affected cadence somewhere between that of Dr Nick from The Simpsons and the Cookie Monster, verbal communication is not an important element of Jeff Achtem's show. This only adds charm, as it allows him to retain a measure of mystery, and the audience to marvel at his bizarre talent for creating silhouettes out of bric-a-brac and bringing them to life.
Achtem has the audience intrigued from the very beginning as he unlaces the boot of a punter and makes a puppet right there on the stage. Sometimes it is difficult to know what to watch - the projection or Achtem himself - as he lies on a suitcase, legs in the air, manipulating a puppet with each.
With his ill-fitting trousers and gravity-defying hair, there is certainly something of the mad inventor about his patter. His puppet friends all have names and hang from a washing-line suspended across the stage. The creative use of found objects makes the show not unlike Jean-Pierre Jeunet’s MicMacs only without the convoluted plot. Similarly, the slapstick and use of caricature resembles the low key humour of Belleville Rendez-Vous. It’s certainly a more subtle and demanding craft than you’ll often find at the Fringe.
Although not unsuitable, there doesn’t appear to be a single child present and surely it can’t be often that puppets keep an adult audience rapt. Sticks, Stones, Broken Bones is probably one of the most inventive and genuinely quirky shows at the Fringe this year.
5 stars.

Edinburgh 2010 Fringe review by: Susan Robinson
To read the original review on-line, click HERE.

“His imagination is boundless” -Stage Edinburgh

Thu, 12 Aug 2010 10:45:37 +0100

“Remember, no matter how busy you are there is always time to play” advises loveable Canadian shadow puppet extraordinaire Jeff Achtem – easily the most he has said all afternoon.
Even better, make a career out of turning models that look like primary school art projects (minus the toilet rolls) into bushy-eyebrowed grannies, grandpas and ninjas as soon as you hold them up to the light.
Achtem’s imagination is boundless. His receding hairline becomes chest hair, a shoe is turned into a cinema-style bucket of drink, a horse rides its jockey... And the expressions of joy on the puppeteer’s face throughout make him look like an excited child who is also seeing the show for the first time.
For, while the shadows made are impressive and great fun, it’s their unassuming creator, a man of very little words but very comprehensive sound effects, who will make you feel warm inside. By the time “The End” is projected onto the screen you will be ready to face the inevitable rain again with a renewed spring in your step.

Edinburgh 2010 Fringe review by: Lauren Paxman
To read the original review on-line, click HERE.

“More entertainment than a multi-million quid McMusical” -The LIST ✭✭✭✭

Thu, 12 Aug 2010 10:31:00 +0100

Your plastic friends
There’s something delightfully primal about a shadow-and-light show; it makes us all into children again. This piece, a light comic novelty of the kind only seen in fringe festivals, is an exemplar of its kind, with the delicate touch required for a family show, and a sense of cartoon hanging over both the children’s toys and bits of cheap plastic that assume monstrous life projected on a white screen.
Montreal performer Jeff Achtem assumes an endearing clown character to bring us into a world where a balloon, a wig and some masking tape become an old woman watching a horror film, while a pen and a shoe acquired from the audience morphs into the creature stalking her. With a teddy bear becoming a man undergoing icky, yet never offensive brain surgery, and another volunteer from the audience propelled into martial arts combat with a kung-fu master made of bits of glove and plastic, the show makes us part of Achem’s imagined world to an impressive degree. You could stack all the props used in this piece up, and I doubt they’d cost you a tenner, yet this little fragment will provide you with more entertainment than the average multi-million quid McMusical.  Underbelly, 0844 545 8252, until 29 Aug, 2pm, £9–£10.50 (£8–£9.50).

4 stars.

Edinburgh 2010 Fringe review by: Steve Cramer
To read the original review on-line, click HERE.