Seriously, guys ...

Poli degaine at Here Arts Center - you've got to check it out!

I went to see it tonight, and La Pendue were just as good as last year. (The show was more or less the same as the one I saw, except that one or two of the sequences had changed.) Most of the dialogue is in French, but non-French speakers will get the gist and will laugh, too.

There were des gens qui parlent le francais in the audience, but I don't know that everyone understood French, or all of what was said. (The puppeteers spoke really fast, and Polichinelle has a Donald Duck-type voice that takes some getting used to.) I do know that the audience went crazy for the show.

For the next few weeks I'll be taking a hiatus from playgoing to focus on Mets games and enjoying what's left of summer. This is not to say that the blog will be on hiatus as well - or that I won't end up seeing a show. It depends on what I have to say ... and if I have to pay for tickets. :)

See this show!

As a tightfisted old lady (30 is the new old) theater critic, it's rare that I'll pay for theater, let alone full price. But sometime over the next few days, I will make it to the show Poli degaine by French theater company La Pendue.

http://www.theatermania.com/content/show.cfm/show/136494

I saw their show La Remede de Polichinelle ("Punch's Remedy") while at the World Festival of Puppet Theatres in France last September. My companions and I, all sober-minded theater critics in our mid 20s to early 30s, left the show holding our aching jaws with happy tears in our eyes. La Pendue's command of the puppets' physicality and their contagious energy were inspiring, and unmatched by the three other Punch shows I've seen since then.

Go to this show, Internet. I implore you, for the sake of your funny bone.