10 Days on Earth
Written and performed by Ronnie Burkett
Darrel is a ‘simply simple’ forty-nine year old man, who lives alone with his Mother. When she dies in her sleep, Darrel does not realise that she is dead and his ‘10 days on earth’ begin.
The performance is made up of twelve characters represented by more than three-dozen exquisite marionettes, each one controlled by fourteen strings. A half dozen versions of the hero, Darrel are there, his mother Ivy in different stages of her life, Darrel’s girl friend, Big Patsy, his favourite storybook characters: Honeydog, and Little Burp, a sheep named Blanche DuBaaa, a wild and extraordinary ‘down and out’ named Llyod who believes he is God, and also Darell’s dad who wouldn’t come to see him throughout his life.
They are all strikingly there in the vortex of yearning and denial, illusion and disappointment, birthing and dying, complexity and simplicity, searching for a home on this journey of life, dangling marvellously on stage under the voice and masterful hands of Canadian, Ronnie Burkett, one of the finest puppeteers in the world.
Fine, touching, tender, raucous, insightful, ‘10 Days on Earth’ asks: if you were alone, but didn’t know it, would you feel lonely?
Among Ronnie Burnett’s influences was Josef Skupa, a Czech puppeteer who used his marionettes to criticise the Nazis. Ronnie Burnett invites us into ‘our world’ where the sanest is mad, and the one who is ‘simply simple’ movingly inhabits his loneliness, while offering his friend Llyod, child-like, unconditional love.
Barbican Pit Theatre
18 April – 5 May 2007