Performances: Flamingo/Winnebago (The Lucidity Suitcase Intercontinental/Le Chat Lunatique/Thaddeus Phillips) (Future Showtimes); The Fantoccini Brothers Return (Mum Puppettheatre) (Future Showtimes)

A note for next year to the PLAF organizers: however long someone tells you that a performance is, add ten minutes to it before you print the program or update the website. People who love the Festival want to see as much during it as they can, and so they schedule performances more or less back-to-back, allowing just enough time to travel between venues. If the first show that they're seeing runs late, they have a lot less time to travel, and in their hurry to get to the second show, they might, oh, I don't know, pull that ligament that runs over the top of your foot.

Which is exactly what I did last night.

In short, PLAF: try to make sure that ticketholders have enough time to travel between shows so that they don't get stupid injuries that leave people asking them why they're limping, and then laughing when they get the answer. It's not very nice.

Flamingo/Winnebago
Nadine's diary entry on Flamingo/Winnebago greatly lowered my expectations of the show – and perhaps that's exactly what I needed, because I ended up enjoying it quite a bit. Was it a bit heavy-handed at times? Sure. But it was also remarkably executed, with one rotating wood-and-clear plastic structure serving as Winnebago, diner, gas station, hotel room, strip club, and more, aided by the help of well-edited video projected on the white screen behind the ubiquitous set piece. The action flowed between scenes quite well (set changes are easy when all you have to do is rotate your set 90°), and the backing band was excellent – when they weren't drowning out the dialogue. (It happened more than once, but the band made up for it admirably by providing not just music but some impressive sound effects. Oh yeah – they also played "Viva Las Vegas" while a member of the company sang it. Well.)

Beware: the show runs a bit longer than its scheduled ninety minutes (see foot injury, above), but if you're not scheduled too tightly, it's definitely a show worth seeing, if only because it's very impressive technically. (And they give you 3D glasses. Neato!)

The Fantoccini Brothers Return
Personal experiences with puppetry: (1) The Muppets; (2) Shari Lewis; (3) those finger puppets they made us make every year for Thanksgiving; (4) Pinocchio; (5) the marionettes that my grandparents would buy me any time we took a day trip to Juarez, Mexico. (I had to get a new one every time because their strings would get hopelessly tangled every time I'd try to play with them.) Needless to say, if you want somebody to put on a quality puppet show for you, it ain't gonna be me. But after seeing The Fantoccini Brothers Return last night, I'll be damned if I didn't want to try.

The Fantoccini Brothers Return is a puppet cabaret featuring both new and classic puppet performances. Some are strange, some are hilarious, and some might actually make you a little weepy. (Well, "The Berlin Wall," at least – who knew that hands could be so expressive?) Performers Dave Johnson, Genevieve Perrier, and Bradley K. Wrenn are exceptional at what they do, sometimes completely fading into the background while their puppets [seemingly] do all the work, and other times interacting directly with them. This is not the kind of puppetry you're probably used to seeing, but it's lovely and it will absolutely leave you wanting more.