Prepare to enter the magical colourful, mythological world of the Saigon Water Puppets, writes Arminta Wallace.
They hurtle towards us at the speed of light; then suddenly, exuberantly, wheel to face each other, skidding across the surface of the water and spewing trails of silver sparks high into the dome of the auditorium. Here be dragons, as mischievous as they are magnificent. And to judge by the "oohs", "aahs", and assorted gasps from the audience crammed into the Cyclorama at Boston's Centre for the Arts, the emotive power of these ancient mythic creatures hasn't been diluted by years of exposure to monsters of the high-tech, big-screen, special-effects variety.
But then fire and water is as potent a mix nowadays as it was a thousand years ago, when rice farmers in the Red River Delta region of Vietnam began to develop a tradition of water puppetry in the flooded fields of the monsoon season, as entertainment for visiting royalty. The lions, ducklings and, of course, dragons, which are going through their paces on a muggy Saturday evening in Boston are firmly rooted in this ancient Vietnamese tradition, as Avril Helbig of Vertical Management, which has been touring the Saigon Water Puppets in the US and Canada since 1998, explains.
"It's one of the reasons I enjoy working with this company so much," she says. "Water puppetry in Vietnam was interrupted during the war years, of course, but up to that point it was uncompromised, and this show is actually a close realisation of what the art form has been throughout the centuries."
A riot, in other words, of colour, sound, and speed-of-light choreography. The set consists of a red pagoda lapped by a pond of blue water. Off to one side a band of five musicians dressed in purple, gold and orange plays a variety of traditional Vietnamese instruments with stunning virtuosity, delivers a constant, rapid-fire dialogue with drop-dead accuracy and maintains a running joke which requires the audience to yell, every so often, the well-known Vietnamese phrase "Oi ... !" Behind the pagoda, and out of sight of the audience, stand the puppeteers, up to their waists in water, manipulating their wooden charges by means of long bamboo rods - this takes tireless arm muscles and considerable expertise.
As the dragons complete their dance and zoom out of sight, grinning, they are succeeded by a pair of dreamy phoenixes, graceful as ice-skaters; a field of hard-working farmers; a troupe of fairy dancers; and a couple of lions whose struggle for possession of a football makes the surface of the pool churn and thrash, causing water to slosh everywhere, and the kids in the front row to howl and squeal with delight (accompanying parents, take note).
Water puppetry is not, however, simply a Vietnamese form of "look behind you" pantomime. While its surface brilliance and sense of fun make it a sure-fire winner with the younger members of any audience, it is also, on a deeper level, a tribute to the elemental power of water as a creative force and a reminder that in order to be meaningful, life must have a spiritual dimension.
"Life in Vietnam revolves around water - it's sacred and precious," says Helbig. "Rice is the primary crop, so the people spend half their lives standing waist-deep in water." In their juxtaposition of the naïve, comical and often inept antics of human beings with the graceful, clever, sometimes downright cunning personalities of the animal kingdom, the Saigon Water Puppets recall the stories of, say, Beatrix Potter, while their evocation of mythical, magical creatures suggests that there's more to life than farming, fishing and - perhaps most aptly of all for contemporary urban audiences - gossiping about your fellow villagers.
While the impact is primarily visual, music is also central to the Saigon Water Puppet experience. The show provides an opportunity to get up close and personal with a jaw-dropping array of drums, bells, gongs and flutes as well as the stone xylophone, the 36-string zither and the uniquely Vietnamese dan bau, a single-stringed instrument in which the subtle pressure of the hand against a carved horn of water buffalo produces an apparently endless variety of weird and wonderful tonal inflections. The company's solo singer, Nguyen Huu Duc, produces an entire paintbox of vocal colours, from soft, lullaby-like melodies to the hilarious honkings of a distressed duck, while percussionist Nguyen Huu Dung drums up - literally - a storm. Short, separate vignettes make the "story" easy to follow, but in the absence of translation or sub-titles the Vietnamese language, too, becomes a kind of percussion instrument, now caressing the text, now providing rhythmic accompaniment, now encouraging the audience to respond "Oi . . . !".
After the hour-long show, the good folk of Boston crowd around the musicians, anxious to try their luck with the dan dinh pa and requesting further demonstrations of various ferocious-looking implements. The visiting journalists, too, crowd around, seeking answers to a bizarre series of questions. "Long life, happiness and success," beams Luong Van Dong, guitarist and impromptu translator for the company, in reply to a query about the themes which underpin the water puppets show. A further inquiry about whether audience reactions are very different in the US and Canada to those at home in Vietnam - where the company performed 500 shows last year - proves untranslatable, but a warning that the company should pack plenty of woolly jumpers for its forthcoming visit to Ireland produces only an insouciant grin. "No problem," he declares. "In Vietnam, also, two seasons - one rainy."
His puppeteer colleague, meanwhile, is struggling to explain why anyone in his or her right mind would spend years training to do a job which involves standing in water waggling heavy poles around for hours at a time. He directs a stream of animated Vietnamese at Luong Van Dong, pauses, then continues - without taking a breath - for at least another minute and a half.
Luong nods, then turns to his expectant audience. "They feel," he translates, with another broad grin, "they are a puppet."
The Saigon Water Puppets are at Donegal Airport for the Earagail Arts Festival on July 12th and 13th, at the Helix, Dublin, from July 15th to July 28th, and at Cork Opera House from July 29th to August 2nd