THEATRE REVIEW

FEBRUARY 2025 | Volume 248

 

I’ve reviewed ten or so Ronnie Burkett plays over the years and loved them all. I’ve anthologized him. For me he is Canada’s most extraordinary theatre artist, and has been for some time. My Burkett bar is set very high. So it hurts my heart to say how disappointed I am with his latest show.

Wonderful Joe mostly follows the usual Ronnie Burkett script. Ronnie is the only human actor on stage, manipulating the wonderful puppets he has designed and performing all their distinctive voices, often in high-speed two- or three-way conversations. He includes some song and dance, lots of gay jokes, and a combination of moving sentimentality and comic vulgarity.

Sweet-natured retired barber-to-the-lesbians Joe Pickleis evicted from his apartment in a tightly knit, low-end neighbourhood, because the entire block is being torn down for condos. Rejecting alternative accommodation, Joe decides that he and his beloved canine companion Mister will use the opportunity to have an adventure, see the world. He doesn’t get far before he meets the developer, his old friend the butcher, a street counselor and a street-dwelling woman trying to get her kid back.

A little further afield he crosses paths with Santa Claus, Jesus, Glenn the Tooth Fairy and an old, decrepit Mother Nature doing her cabaret act.

Despite the astonishing lifelike appearance and movements of the marionettes, and some amusing dialogue, not much is really going on here. There’s no plot to speak of, and none of what appear to be the main themes gets developed. Burkett just scratches the surface of the first part’s social concerns and Mother Nature’s degradation. The fantastic possibilities of the Santa-Jesus-Tooth Fairy scene devolve into the characters just saying “fuck” a lot. Nor do we get any of the tour de force puppetry that his other plays deliver.

I was left appreciating the gentleness of Joe and his affection for Mister and for the world that he appears soon to be leaving, although even Joe feels less well developed than Burkett’s other central characters.

Even geniuses have their relatively pedestrian days. I wish Wonderful Joe were more wonderful, but I look forward eagerly to Wonderful Ronnie’s next opus.

 

 

 

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