The Handspring Puppet Company was in town for two Memorial Hall performances of Tall Horse plus a few sessions with UNC art classes. The life-sized puppets were certainly impressive, and the telling of the 19th century story of Eqypt’s gift of a giraffe to France has a lot of potential, but the final tally was disappointing as it was difficult to follow the dialogue with some actors using thickly accented English and others using French (with supertitles, if you happened to notice them above the stage). We could get enough to follow the story loosely, but could only get a glimpse of the political humor that was sprinkled thoughout the story.
The framework of the play was very interesting. Even while the audience was filing in, the players were already in character on stage miming tasks in a museum warehouse, such as filing and examining artifacts. The play begins in earnest with a French scientist coming to investigate a new find. When the staff finds the scientist lacking any historical context, they offer to educate him with a puppet play telling the story of the early interaction between Eqypt and France. This play within a play was a clever way to ameliorate the disruption of seeing the puppeteers standing behind the puppets.