Review: Outpost, Brewery Theatre

This co-production between Tobacco Factory Theatres, Norway’s Nordland Visual Theatre and Bristol’s long-standing puppet masters Green Ginger uses its comedic weapons to shoot at some big targets. Via the tale of Luis and BK, guards stationed by their respective nations at a remote desert frontier crossing, Outpost examines nationalism and borders, compassion and the lust for power, ordering people around and letting them be the way they are.

Sizeable though that checklist may be, Outpost will stay with you chiefly for the beauty of its puppets and sets, and for the captivating, edge-of-civilisation atmosphere they evoke in tandem with Benji Bower’s typically pungent score.

The guards’ little huts gaze implacably at each other over a creaking barrier and a few forbidding square metres of dust, sand and mud: a simple set with a powerfully flyblown quality. You can almost hear the cicadas chirrup and the – well, nothing else in fact. For miles. Having the two huts spin 180 degrees to reveal their interiors – poignant attempts at homeliness, in these far-flung little cubby holes – is a nice touch.

It gets better, though, when a strange discovery drives BK and Luis underground – and into a still more beautiful set, ingeniously conjured from its predecessor with a few deft lifts and slots. Our odd couple find themselves in a mysterious underworld, lit by beautiful crystals and peopled by… best say no more, but suffice to say that more of Green Ginger’s inimitable ingenuity comes into play here.

Luis (manipulated and voiced by Adam Fuller) and BK (Chris Pirie) quickly emerge as strongly drawn characters – the former new to the job, twanging with pride, officiousness and the arrogant nationalism he’s been spoonfed; the latter an old hand for whom rules have been replaced over time by a warm, wry humanism. It takes an encounter with a third figure, idolised by Luis but soon showing her unattractive true colours (Kim Heron doing the honours here, splendidly) to make our young hero see that compassion may be a better way than jack-booted insularity.

Outpost has some pressing contemporary issues in its sights (indeed, recent events have only pushed these issues further up the agenda). You could argue productively about whether this show, or puppetry in general, makes the most articulate platform for these discussion: but on this evidence I think it’s up there.

Its stock characters may not be the very subtlest, but they get their respective worldviews across clearly – and the show’s unexpected victims are arguably all the more poignant for being non-human. It’s as a display of Green Ginger’s pre-eminence at atmospheric, visually arresting and darkly comic puppet theatre, though, that Outpost really hits home.

Outpost continues at the Brewery Theatre until Saturday, October 24. For more info and to book tickets, visit www.tobaccofactorytheatres.com/shows/detail/outpost