BWW Reviews: Puppets! At HERE! Phantom Limb Presents THE FORTUNE TELLER

Puppets! At HERE! Phantom Limb presents THE FORTUNE TELLER in all of its gothic glory. From the cell phone announcement until the curtain call, the audience is completely in the capable, tiny wooden hands of Erik Sanko's marionettes. This classic morality tale manages to evoke a playful morbidity; it's eery, but delightfully so.

A lawyer that serves as our narrator is voiced by Gavin Friday with an ironic melancholy worthy of Poe. He reads the last will and testament of a deceased millionaire in the dining hall of the millionaire's empty mansion. A motley crew of the town's seven most unsavory characters (the optometrist, the chef, the actor, to name a few) has been called to the reading but none of them have ever heard of the mysterious millionaire. They begin to get restless - string attached limbs shifting, irritated in their tiny chairs. And then the Fortune Teller arrives. The will proclaims that each must have their fortunes told in turn, and the skeletal fortune teller reads the cards of each character - revealing how they will die.

At times just predictable to satisfy, the plot loses energy near its conclusion. But against the beauty of the scenes and Danny Elfman's haunting soundtrack, the play's framework is secondary to its individual scenes. Some stories are woven more richly than others in words, but each presents its own vivid enactment of its subject's demise. The hunter chases a butterfly (the chef chases a chicken) and for the actor, it snows. The small details that lead each character to his fate are the real compelling moments in this show. Each set is a carefully constructed diorama, stunning in its simplicity and art. It's hypnotizing alone, watching the marionettes and their complex, often graceful movements (thanks to masterful puppeteers behind the curtain) as they navigate their separate worlds.