19 Nocturne Avenue (I love that name) has a long history of
producing audio drama, and the first play of theirs that I heard, Puppets, is an impressive testimony to
their years of experience. Julie
Hoverson seems to be the creative powerhouse behind much of 19 Nocturne Avenue,
and Puppets is no exception. The anonymous host is obviously in the style
of OTR suspense radio classics like The
Witch’s Tale and in the UK, The Man
in Black. While I found Puppets very interesting and quite
enjoyable, it was also confusing—due, I think, to the ambitiousness of the
production, which excelled in areas like sweeping, atmospheric music and
delightfully gruesome sound effects.
The story is a lot to take on. It’s historical (set in 1920), refers to the grand guignol theatre tradition which
even frequent listeners to suspense may not be aware of, uses a flashback style
of narration, and has a Maupassant-like ending.
I was, in fact, familiar with grand
guignol, not least because of Big Finish’s Eighth Doctor play, Scapegoat.
Setting aside the fact that Scapegoat
is not one of the most effective plays in that range, it at least presented
a clear distinction between the backstage scenes and those presented to a crowd
whose reactions ranged from the jaded to the disgusted. However, the nature of the story being told
in Puppets could not make those
distinctions clear and therefore created a great deal of confusion; confusion
that could lead to frustration rather than ambiguity that forms tantalizing
questions. With this fundamental issue
taking place, the fact the story was told in a non-linear fashion also
contributed to a sense of groping in the dark that had nothing to do with the
audio pictures, which were theatrical, engaging, and grim, created in part by
solid performances, and the effects which I mentioned earlier. Even the BBC Dracula (1998) dared not be so aurally graphic in its depiction of
Lucy’s staking as Puppets did in the
severing of a characters hand, which included the sound of evacuating blood
pulsing obscenely!
Scapegoat and Puppets seem to have the same “wheeze”
going on regarding the reality of the murder and violence enacted onstage, but
in fact they differ greatly, leading to the aforementioned Maupassant ending,
which was entirely unexpected and very clever.
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