Puppet theater says 'get thee to a funnery'

The Toone puppet theater is famous for its eccentric adaptation of Hamlet and The Three Musketeers. But, as John Miller discovers, it's not without its serious side.

"In the 19th century, puppet theater was the poor man's television," said Jose Geal, also known as Toone VII. "They had soaps, satires, news and real operas. They would do Hamlet in 15 three-hour episodes."

Today, Geal is the owner, manager, actor, salesman and curator of Brussels' last puppet theater -- and the keeper of a fragile tradition.

Near the city's Grand Place, the Royal Toone Theater hosts about 200 shows a year. The plays are performed in a cozy second- floor attic, where the lifeless puppets on the walls strike an eerie contrast to the on-stage figures, talking, shouting, fighting and even making love.

The trademark format is a parody of a great work in two 40- minute acts. Geal reads the voices, while part-time staff manipulate the puppets. Three chorus figures appear in every play to offer a moral perspective: Piltje La Mort, a skeleton; Woltje, a young Brusseleir; and Den Duivel, the devil.

Geal injects plenty of contemporary satire; in his Faust, the main character asks Mephistopheles if his soul will be reimbursed by la mutuelle (the health insurance).

Geal is a classically trained actor. "Humor is serious," he said. "When people lose their sense of humor, they become dangerous." Most of his shows are in French or Dutch, although Geal can turn his voice to English, Spanish, Italian, German and Bruxellois. "I used to do much more local dialect but nobody speaks it anymore."

Geal's son Nicolas, seated in the ground-floor office, has followed in his father's footsteps and become Toone VIII. The task will not be easy since Antoine Genty founded Toone in 1830, the line of succession has only once passed from father to son.

"You don't just have to be chosen by the previous Toone," Geal said. "You also have to be accepted by the public."

Toone is a national institution and a family business. Geal and his wife, Andree Longcheval, run it from a house in Schaerbeek, another part of town. Their desks in the ground-floor office are covered with thousands of papers -- scripts, bookings, posters and letters.

"We threw out computer years ago," he said. "This is an ecological office." Memorabilia, archives and a 1,200-strong puppet collection are stored on the first floor.

Above that, the four-room production studio is cluttered with tools and raw materials for puppetmaking: a lathe, two sewing machines, hundreds of rolls of cloth, miniature wigs, hats, helmets and swords, saws, drills, molds and rulers.

On the wall hang a host of headless characters in full regalia: the heads, a crowd of little painted faces, leer from the shelves. D'Artagnan, Hamlet, Macbeth and Faust have delicate heads molded from a plaster mix, while the noggins of the supporting cast are sculpted from ash.

On my visit, Nicolas and seamstress Lidia Gosamo were busy sewing costumes for William Tell, which Geal was to perform for the first time in Switzerland. A table was piled high with tape, string, bits of cloth and designs by Thierry Bosquet, creator of costumes for the Brussels Opera and the New York Met.

From start to finish, a puppet costs approximately 50,000 BF and requires 20 hours' work. Each one-meter body is made in the same way. Two spindly arms stuffed with straw are attached to a wooden torso wrapped in canvas. The legs are rolled-up cardboard, cemented with masking tape and filled with sawdust, while feet, hands and arms are sculpted from ash. A hook atop the torso holds the head, which has a bar through it. From walkways above the stage, puppeteers use the bar to move the characters and rotate their heads. Arms are moved with strings attached to the hands. Costumes, including armor, are sewn on.

"The puppets weigh between six kilograms and eight kilograms, so the balance is vital," Geal said. "Otherwise, they would be too heavy to manipulate for a whole show."

Geal has 33 characters in his repertoire and all the characters are stored here.

"We keep several copies of each character," he said. "They get scuffed up a bit on stage."

He watched as Gosamo unpacked a box of wigs. "Too short," he said. "Send them back." Then he hurried to the office to field a call about a private show.

Smart marketing has helped Geal make Toone financially viable, a feat his predecessors did not manage. And, by buying the theater and the studios, he has given the puppets a permanent home.

"You have to adapt," he said. "I shortened the shows, introduced more languages. People don't want Hamlet in 15 three- hour episodes anymore."

Royal Toone Theater, Impasse Schuddeveld, 21 Petite Rue des Bouchers, Brussels, tel: 025117137.

This article was first published in The Bulletin, Belgium's English-language news-weekly.