Gavin Skerritt

 

 

 

 

 


Tall tales beyond the border

In a Welsh castle at the edge of the sea, listeners, tellers, gods and demons gathered for a festival of story.

The mythic is also the new: a truth revealed in an entirely different but equally compelling manner by a remarkable young Welsh-English puppeteer, Gavin Skerritt. His hour-long show, Y Weledigaeth (The Vision) — a tribute to his Welsh-speaking grandmother — is almost impossible to describe. A tiny theatre, like a jewel-box, spotlit — evocative puppets whose actions clearly spring from narrative but are not narrative — and all overseen by the presence of the puppeteer, clad in black, black gauze over his eyes and head, his face chalk white, his red mouth singing haunting Welsh melodies.


Erica Wagner, The Times.