大象传媒

The unique world of puppetry by Faulty Optic took audiences on a bizarre journey to a gruesome underworld, punctuated with macabre film and an eclectic aural backdrop composed by Mira Calix.

In the moving new collaboration of what might happen next in the Ancient Greek myth of Orpheus, the puppet鈥檚 human idiosyncrasies that continue in the Land of the Dead entice laughter from the audience.

Ironically, as the atmosphere becomes progressively surreal, the puppets seem to live and breathe, so much so that when the applause comes and the puppeteers unveil themselves from their black cladding, it is something of a surprise.

Woven with live viola, clarinet and cello, the soundtrack is bold and disjointed with fluid operatic voices, wasp noises and sonic imagery as grating and as tormenting as you might imagine a hellish underworld to be.

The overall effect is ghoulish and hypnotic. At times, feeling as lost as Eurydice and Orpheus in the murky underworld, it was with some relief at the end to come up for air.