The Macri-Weill Sicilian puppet troupe brought their production of "The Legend of Luigi Sofia" to a packed Center Theater filled mostly with children and their families Saturday afternoon.
What they saw was a puppet spectacular filled with all the raw intensity of grand theater mitigated by the fact that all the characters had steel rods through their heads.
The plot centered around the villain, Alisha-Hilal's attempt to capture the last Sicilian stronghold, Taormina, as part of a plan to seize all Italy in the name of Islam. After five months of siege, the Sicilians won't surrender. Finally the hero, Luigi Sofia, duels with Alisha-Hilal to the death and the Italians triumph.
However, this was not achieved without lots and lots of gore. Each of the two acts worked to a bloody climax that delighted the audience. At the end of Act One, the head soldier of the Christian army was beheaded with great flourish and at least one family had to get up and leave.
Had they stayed for the last act they probably wouldn't have enjoyed the play's gripping finale: A celebration of puppet carnage featuring blood and at least three more in-air beheadings. In that scene alone at least eight puppets lay lifeless on the floor as Luigi Sofia delivered his rousing closing lines.
Despite the violence, or more probably because of it, the rest of the audience was immensely entertained and enchanted by the performance. Besides the specifics of this performance, Saturday's experience also served as a window to an old world and culture.
Before the show opened, there was an introduction about the history of this art-form, how the puppeteers are unscripted (only following a plot outline), and how these particular eighty-pound puppets are about 100 years old.
This is a style of artistic entertainment that seems extremely dated. It came well before the advent of radio or television, and so its effects are perhaps more crude.
But if the style of entertainment is dated, its matter is not.
Puppetry is a window to an older culture but is also a mirror to our own. Heroism, war, good vs. evil, and violence are both fundamental components of the modern day artistic entertainment and of life itself.
