Fusions recent tour of 'SatirEyes' in partnership with WaxBaby Productions has received some wonderful feedback since its performances in London and the Buxton Puppet Festival.
Performed by 4 puppeteers, supported by their tour manager and technician, the company produced a 40 minute production based on William Hogarths political masterpiece, The March of the Guards to Finchley.

Recent audience comments:

“Thank you for such an inspiring evening ! The painting was a fantastic idea for stimulus. The puppeteers’ imaginations seem limitless. They obviously did a huge amount of research. I was so impressed with the marionettes, ‘ Portrait’ by Emma Nicholson almost reduced me to tears. I was particularly impressed with Sophia Bouzidi’s performance of ‘Mother Ruin’ . I loved the idea of the skirt as the whorehouse, fantastic!” Angie Kerkham

“I have to tell you we were SO IMPRESSED WITH THE HIGH STANDARD AND QUALITY OF ALL THE PERFORMANCES! It was a beautiful, fantastic, mesmerising and moving showpiece! I loved the marionettes, they are Art pieces all by themselves! Also it ‘worked’ really well in terms of space and atmosphere within the Museum! So congratulations!” Catherine Rooney

The show also received an outstanding review after the Buxton Puppet Festival:

‘The March of the Guards to Finchley’ painted by William Hogarth in 1750 portrays the darker side of human life and the depravity of existence in London at the time. The ranks of army in their red uniforms disappear into the distance, but the foreground is thronging with crowds of drunkards, prostitutes, gamblers, and women and children caught up in the chaos. There is a sense of claustrophobia and the confusion of being trapped in such a world.

‘Satireyes’ a puppet performance by Caroline Astell-Burt, Emma Nicholson, and Emma Fisher, all assisted by puppetry student Adam Powell, brings ‘The March of the Guards to Finchley’ to life. It is as if a magnifying glass were held to the painting, picking out certain gestures, facial expressions, the small details you would certainly miss on first viewing. The puppeteers have each chosen to focus on a particular character within the painting. The marionettes they have created - a young prostitute, a little black boy from new Guinea, and a starving child whose father has gone to war, are beautifully crafted and their sad, poverty stricken lives are portrayed with such imagination and skill that they become real and memorable for us. I loved their grace, the soft contact of their feet on the floor and the fluidity as they moved across the stage.

The performers play beautifully with scale. There is Mother Needham with her raw bony face and exposed breast, a huge sinister character who appears after each scene, linking together the stories of the three main characters. She is the keeper of the Kings Head Brothel, and with a chorus of whores attached to her skirt, she eyes the audience with malevolence. There is a beautiful moment when she dangles a rosy apple at an innocent and graceful girl, a tiny puppet who swings in front of her only to be caught in the web of her brothel. The prostitute, a marionette dressed in contemporary clothing, staggers across the stage and sinks down to the floor in a drunken stupor. Inside her swollen belly is a tiny foetus clutching a gin bottle. There are the tiny tin soldiers, who fall at the sound of gunshot, showing us how easily dispensable is human life, and the little black boy, sold as a curiosity, who journeys home in his dreams over a sea of white silk.

The duet between puppeteer Emma Nicholson and her marionette child, a little boy who has lost his father to the war, is a most touching finish to the piece. As the starving boy is fed crumbs by his mother, we are moved both by the relationship between the puppeteer and her puppet, as well as the tenderness and despair of a mother who can no longer feed her child.

‘Satireyes’ works so well in that it vividly recreates a dark and oppressive period of time for the audience. We see both its perpetrators and its victims, and are intrigued, mesmerised and moved by the characters and their struggle. The insight and imagination of the puppeteers throws light so clearly on Hogarth’s society that suddenly we are left in no doubt as to the parallels with our own.

Tricia Durdey August 2007