Show Day

Spare Parts Puppet Theatre has been a Fremantle institution for decades, but sadly, due to building issues, the company is unable to perform at their Short Street venue. Show Day is a celebration of agricultural shows and is perhaps the perfect choice for Spare Parts’ present performance space, the Ellie Eaton Theatre, within Claremont Showground – the home of Perth’s Royal Show.

A great school holiday outing, families can bookend the 50-minute performance with activities in the adjacent pavilion, which include helping to build a model showground from boxes and scraps – early in the season, this is beginning to take shape nicely.

The show itself is great fun - almost vignette in style, we experience a day at a show, from the judges at the cakes and biscuits competition, through a young lass late for the poultry judging, woodchopping, sheepdog trials and show jumping. The performance culminates in a very clever “fireworks” display.

There is a huge cast of puppets in this production in many different styles, with audience favourites including a gorgeous soft puppet chook, a delightful sheepdog herding a trio of rolling sheep and Barry, a puppet head, worn by Ellis Pearson (whose movement is superb) – a beautifully expressive combination of mask-work and puppetry. The work of puppet makers Jane Davies, Sanjiva Margio, Cecile Williams, Umberto Margio and Jackson Harrison is teamed superbly with fun costuming designed by Cecile Williams and realised by Kylie Bywaters.

Performers Ellis Pearson, Nadia Martich, Bec Bradley and Michael Barlow demonstrate outstanding teamwork and are on the move throughout, continually transforming from one gorgeously broad-stroke character to another.

At the performance I attended there was a group of showground employees in attendance who were as enraptured with the performance as the primary school children seated at the front – testament to the accuracy of the story and its charm.

While this venue is unfamiliar to most theatregoers, Spare Parts Puppet Theatre have made it into a very comfortable performance space – and it is well worth checking it out. Show Day is a fun, bright and brisk show, that clearly enchanted both children and adults alike.

Kimberley Shaw

Photographer: Nic Duncan.