Puffs

There are two types of people who might go to Matt Cox’s Puffs at the terrific tent-theatre that has ‘popped-up’ in Sydney’s Moore Park: fans of the books and films about the school life of Harry Potter, and everyone else. I put myself in the latter category. I’ve missed the books, viewed one of the movies in the cinema (the first) and managed to escape their myriad, commercial-ridden repeats on television. So, not ideal then.

Fortunately, I follow my colleague Penelope Thomas who rave-reviewed this show for Stage Whispers earlier in the year when it played Melbourne. Unstinting in her praise for all and sundry, she declared Puffs to be ‘uproariously hilarious’, and you can’t say fairer than that.

But, my program declares, ‘audiences do not need to have any experience or knowledge’ of Harry Potter and his school career. Oh, no? So why did I sit bemused and untouched by events on stage ‘not endorsed, sanctioned, or in any other way supported directly or indirectly by Warner Bros. Entertainment, the Harry Potter book publishers or J.K. Rowling and her representatives’, while sections of the audience cheered and thrilled at the blatant rip-offs and loving credits to the original.

For there’s no doubt that there is oodles of fun and charm for the Potterphiliacs. Puffs is the name given to the also-rans of Harry’s class, the ones who don’t make it to the top. There’s Wayne (Ryan Hawke), porky newcomer from Sheep Shearers Flats in Queensland, his well-kitted friend Oliver (Adam Marks) and darkly groomed Megan (Angelina Thomson).

There’s a Narrator (Gareth Isaac) and some excellent women (Annabelle Tudor and Lauren McKenna stand out). Many of the gags and plot lines come and go in a flash, lost in the rush of speedy business. Microphones would help.

As we go through each school year, our friends grapple with the finer points of the Potter plots. “The Headmaster looks different this year,” says one third-year, as they ponder mortal problems.

This is an American production (direction, Kristin McCarthy Parker), backed by American talent and American money. At the end of the show I was let out into the Sydney world again, my jaws defiantly intact and unaching.

Frank Hatherley

Photographer: Ben Fon