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New Collectibles •11/01 - The Muppet Christmas Carol Pop! Figures: Bob Cratchit with Tiny Tim, Mrs. Cratchit, Charles Dickens with Rizzo, Fozziwig, The Marley Brothers, Scrooge
•10/24 - The Muppets Take Manhattan 4K Ultra HD Blu-ray with Frank Oz Commentary •10/1 - Supersize Count von Count •10/01 - Sesame Street Action Figures Wave 1: Ernie with Rubber Duckie, Bert with Bernice, Count von Count, Yip Yip Martians •9/1 - Fraggle Rock Action Figures Wave 1: Gobo, Red, Traveling Matt, Architect and Cotterpin, Flange |
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Emmet Otter musical debuts at Goodspeed Opera House Humanized Creatures Meet Creaturized Humans Courtesy of The Day The whole notion of reimagining a show in a different genre has become a staple of show business, but rarely has it been done this way: A TV special taking to the stage - with the puppets from the original becoming real, live actors. This is the merry morphing happening in “Emmet Otter's Jug-Band Christmas.” The original version, fondly remembered by kids who've seen it since its 1977 debut on HBO, was replete with Jim Henson Company playfulness and puppetry.
Thirty-one years later, the Henson Company has joined with Goodspeed Musicals to reimagine the piece as a stage show. The TV special, directed and produced by Jim Henson, was purely puppets. This theater version casts people in the lead roles, amidst a world of supporting-cast puppets. A quick plot-explanatory aside: The story serves as a downhome take-off on O. Henry's “Gift of the Magi.” Emmet Otter and his Ma are dirt poor, and so each secretly enters a Christmas Eve talent contest to try to win enough money to buy each other a gift. In the new version, humans are tricked out in elaborate costumes and evocative makeup, transformed into whimsical animal characters - with equally whimsical, self-explanatory names, like Stan Weasel and Fred Lizard. One of the big theatrical challenges is to make the humans and the peripheral-role puppets somehow work together to create a seamless universe onstage.
Tyler Bunch, who serves as the puppet captain for the production, says, “We had a movement discussion, about how the critters walk when they're in puppet form or when they're in human form and trying to make all of them feel like they're in the same world. It's just feeling that the audience is with you on that journey into this world and that they all look like they belong there.” Of course, doing puppetry in a theater, in front of a live audience, is a much different thing than doing it for a camera. For a TV show, a given scene can get another take if things go awry. In a theater, meanwhile, the show has to look convincing to a theater full of individuals who have different sightlines instead of just to a camera's single point of view. At Goodspeed, a good many of the puppeteers will work from the orchestra pit, from behind bits of scenery, and even popping up through a trap door. (The members of the orchestra will be on a platform toward the back of the stage.) Four experienced puppeteers are part of the program, but the logistics'll get particularly tricky since they are each playing multiple characters. Bunch says, “There are actually times when the characters I voice will be manipulated by another puppeteer because I had to be on the other side of the stage to do something else. So a puppeteer will pick up my character and lipsync to my voice offstage.” Sometimes, things get even more complicated. For a scene in which puppet Yancey Woodchuck plays the banjo, two puppeteers have to get in the act. Puppeteer David Stephens - who is an excellent banjo player in real life - uses his two hands to play the instrument, and he sings as the character. Bunch, meanwhile, moves the puppet's mouth. ”Puppeteers approach a role in the same way an actor would,” Bunch says. “One of the things I said to these guys when we first started was that a really good puppeteer is automatically a really good actor. They already have the heart and soul of an actor. The puppet is just the tool they use to express in the same way this gentleman (he gestures to lead actor Daniel Reichard) has worked so hard at his performing physique and his performing voice, we do the same but with a specific part of our body. ”So we're aiming toward the same goal, the realism of the humanized creatures. We're anthropomorphizing these lovely little fuzzy things.”
Bunch knows whereof he speaks. He has been a puppeteer on the likes of “Sesame Street” and “Bear in the Big Blue House,” but he's also acted in productions with the New York Gilbert & Sullivan Players and TV's “Law & Order.” During a recent rehearsal, people and puppeteers worked together to create a cohesive theater world. Actors sang in a faux rowboat that they propelled across the floor with their feet. In front of and behind them, puppeteers populated the landscape with a few puppets - although, since this was very early in the rehearsal process, some used just their bare hands because the puppets were still being built, tweaked and perfected. Singing the jaunty “There Ain't No Hole in the Washtub” with Ma (played by Cass Morgan) was Reichard as the titular Emmet. Reichard has gone from playing one of the Four Seasons in Broadway's “Jersey Boys” to portraying, well, an otter. Acting in a Muppet-rich environment doesn't feel totally alien to him.
Reichard had never seen the TV version of “Emmet Otter” as a child but had listened to the John Denver and the Muppets album, which featured puppet artist Jerry Nelson, who was the voice of Emmet. They dueted on “When the River Meets the Sea” from “Emmet Otter.” He is basing the character's voice on Nelson's, he says, “because that's the quintessential Muppet voice. A lot of it is inspired by him and also the childlike innocence and lack of pretension of all of the Muppet characters.” Reichard has a theory, too, about why shows like “Emmet Otter” have maintained their popularity with the public. He says, “The reverence and the joy that you experience when watching (Henson productions) endures because there is that amazing line that he and his company walked, between adult sensibilities and philosophies, and a childlike humor and playfulness and silliness.”
Cast
Daniel Reichard as Emmet Otter Cass Morgan as Ma Otter Alan Campbell as Pa Otter Kate Wetherhead as Jane Stephen Beinskie as Stan Weasel Justin Bohon as Harvey Kevin Covert as Mayor Fox Leo Daignault as Chuck Madeline Doherty as Mrs. Mink Colin Hanlon as Fred Lizard Jeff Hiller as Charlie Lisa Howard as Mrs. Fox Sheri Sander as Heddy Robb Sapp as Wendell Puppeteers
Tyler Bunch Anney McKilligan James Silson David Stephens
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”I, like millions of other people, have Muppets in my blood. I am part Muppet,” he says during a break in rehearsal. “I was obsessed with Ernie and Bert. 'Sesame Street' and 'The Muppet Movie' and this Muppet Christmas album - they all just bring back such peaceful and fond memories of my childhood.”
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