My love of puppetry lies in the same brain cells as my love of opera: both touch the essence of theatricality. Puppetry’s uniqueness as a performing art lies in the brain cells, the wellsprings of the true puppeteer, where the fantastic and the mysterious have never dried up, as they have in most adults in the course of our ‘between age’ education. The reasons for this dessication are not to be examined here. Somehow the puppeteer retains and refines the imagination he or she was endowed with at birth.

Gavin Skerritt is a puppeteer endowed not only with a creative imagination, but with the performing skills to transmit his ideas to an audience. His voice is resonant, his timing and projection good, his feeling for the dramatic and the unexpected sharp. Y Weledigaeth is his first foray into independent production for an adult audience, and it was a fine piece of theatre. It was a celebration and at the same time a (perhaps unconsciously) critical look at Welsh-ness, its language, music, the sounds of the countryside, snapshots of its history and its life. All this was achieved through the medium of a single blindfolded performer, acting, singing, manipulating a few dolls and puppets, arranging drapery and objects in a space that was decorated and lit so that it was always a pleasure and a surprise for the eye as well as the ear.

The most unusual element of the show, given its new-ness, was the discipline and the finish, the control and the assuredness of its performance. One felt that every move had been carefully choreographed, the whole meticulously planned. But do not imagine that it was cold: as I said, it was a celebration, a declaration of love.
I look forward to seeing it again.

Penny Francis M.B.E.
British UNIMA