Tooth and Sinew are the local theatre world’s trailblazers of explosively creative derangement. Doomsday clown prophets with a gift for the cleverly profane, their sick genius perverts the tropes of children’s entertainment to tell end-of-world stories about chaos, madness, stupidity and – as in Apocka-wocka-lockalypse – puppets getting tube-fed a full bottle of urine.
Presented like Play School in psychopath mode, and running in the tiny hothouse of Meraki Arts Bar’s third floor theatre, Richard Hilliar’s play is pegged as the “spiritual sequel” to the lurid and majestic grotesquerie that was Ubu – a clownish tale of idiotic power-squabblers in a society on the brink of total collapse. In Apocka, we’re well past the brink: beyond the heavy locked door of a bunker called ‘Haven’, located somewhere in the deadlands of Parramatta, there are only dust storms, marauding tribes and death.
Hilliar’s plays really lean into nightmarish excess and puerility – simultaneously speaking to our little kiddy brains and our primitive, lecherous id
Miss Melissa (a wonderfully unhinged Nicole Wineberg) is our surviving human: an overalls-wearing woman of bright smiles and the honey-toned coo of a preschool teacher. Founder of Haven, she awaits the return of the ‘Last Chance Plane’ – a mythical aircraft which will find them and take them away to wherever the rich people went when the world began to burn.
Schnerk, Titzi, Blerkina and Gorbo are our surviving monsters (puppets made by Ash Bell, and manipulated and with excellent silly voicework by Nathan Porteus, Lib Campbell, Zoe Crawford and Matt Abotomey). Invoking Avenue Q, the four colourful Sesame Street-like puppets, goofy and innocent, were taken in by Miss Melissa and hence saved from certain death. Their debt to her goes further too, because – lacking basic dexterity with their fuzzy-wuzzy useless paws – they rely on her for just about everything. Cooking. Cleaning. Taking care of their own waste. They literally can’t pick up after themselves, because they can’t pick anything up. (A fact which occasionally precipitates a bit of fun audience involvement.)
All in all, there’s quite the power imbalance going on.
With pastel chequerboard walls, storytime sessions, cheery songs and ‘lessons’ on things like ‘consequences’, Haven seems like a nurturing space, and Miss Melissa seems a nurturing figure. But resources are getting scarce, and after two puppets bang, it becomes clear that the illusion of harmony can crack at any moment – and that their refuge is more like a lunatic asylum.
Hilliar’s plays (which he also directs) really lean into nightmarish excess and puerility – their comedy thrills because it’s over the top, and because it simultaneously speaks to our little kiddy brains and our primitive, lecherous id. Puppets are kind of perfect for this – uncanny and dubiously cute little creatures, which come alive only with a hand up their ass, and with caricaturish features that somehow incorporate either enormous eyeballs or no visible eyeballs at all. (If you want more puppet horror, see web series Don’t Hug Me I’m Scared).
I have always loved puppets for being a bit wrong, and I love their outsized characters here too. Special mention to Lib Campbell, who excels in her comic voicework as the strong-headed Titzi, stubbornly obsessed with pools when there’s hardly any water to drink.
Apocka is dark and demented, but it’s a lot sweeter than Ubu. We sympathise with most characters, with only one real villain in the mix. There is less riotous obscenity jangling through the story, too. Sometimes it felt like the show treated the audience a bit too much like soft-brained kids, relying on deliberately dopey jokes and general silliness to keep us entertained. Gladly, things get increasingly twisted in the second half, and my perverted inner-self purred.
There are all kinds of creative responses to the colossal planetary self-sabotage that is anthropological climate change. Many are mournful and urgent; others full of rage. Most try to inject some hope. Apocka-wocka-lockalypse sets itself apart by animating the horrific absurdity of what mankind is doing to itself – when you laugh, you’re also giving out an existential scream. Are we too selfish and petty to even want to be saved?
I have only love in my heart for any creative enterprise which takes on serious subjects without taking itself too seriously. Play is a much more engaging tool than pontification, after all. Is it an effective one? Can art, even in the smallest way, alter the blazing fireball of death trajectory we're on? Well, it can try. It's gotta. Whatever the case, may we be gifted with another jack-in-the-box of inspired madness from Tooth and Sinew soon.
Apocka-wocka-lockalypse plays at Meraki Arts Bar, Oxford St, until April 1, 2023. Tickets are $30-$35 and you can snap up yours here.