When purchasing a ticket for Bloody Henry, I had expectantly sought no more than an amusing night of wittily assembled, Renaissance-rendering puppets. However, after leaving the Lee Theatre last Saturday night, my time was surprisingly consumed by erratic and interchanging fits of laughter, sadness, sarcasm, shyness, historical awareness, and – simply put – awe…

Though I’d frequented the Lee Center For The Arts many times before, I was nonetheless hesitant as I wandered between the ominous scarlet curtains, which lined the wide yet compressed hallway and led into the theatre itself. Helping to ease the flow of spectators, there stood at the door a merry pair of ticket-tearing, program-giving ushers. Rather than the typically flimsy sheet of paper one comes to expect at a stage production, I instead found myself holding a gritty, rolled-up leaflet, held in place by a curvy snippet of red ribbon. Like a medieval knight carrying his courtly scroll, I found my seat and unrolled my awarded diploma with both hands, preparing to read aloud the ancient ink characters written before me.

Even before the play had begun, my heart was prepared for some terrible, feudal fun.

The history-depicting play began with a bit of (oddly enough) history. King Henry the Eighth (who in this year 2009 happens to be celebrating the 500^th year anniversary of his own coronation) only became king as a result of his older brother Arthur’s death. In what seemed a suitably short time, Henry married his brother’s widow – Catherine of Aragon – and soon inherited the crown.

In stage form, this history lesson was bestowed upon the audience before the central puppets themselves were even revealed. Rather, our eager eyes were set upon a large projection sheet, behind which occurred an impressive collection of Monty Python-esque, cardboard and shadow puppetry. Shocked at first, the audience needed only moments to welcome the situation; soon, we were chuckling and hitting each other with elbows at the paper cutout herd of horses, riding to Rome with a delicate, one-man “neigh.” The purposeful cartoon scenery was vaguely reminiscent of the popsicle-stick puppets that many of us delighted in forging during the better years of elementary school. I for one certainly didn’t realize that, for those souls who continued such fine artwork, an impressive career involving live cutout animation could be both attempted and conquered. That night, I was most certainly sitting witness to a real-time comic precision that held just as much genius intensity as the work of Terry Gilliam (the Monty Python cartoonist) himself.

Look familiar?

However, Bloody Henry didn’t dare leave the audience to a two-dimensional show. Soon enough, a collection of foot-and-a-half high Bunraku puppets took to the stage. Cloaked men and women followed everywhere behind the beady-eyed tiny faces. Covered head to toe in incredible detail, most puppets seemed to be wearing exotically expensive clothes that were more royally valuable than my own. As little puppet legs danced in precise accordance to their swinging puppet arms, the veiled actors demonstrated how still-hidden lips could not stop them not from emitting such powerful vocal lines.

Though anywhere from two to six hands seemed to be operating on any one puppet at any given time, most eyes fell quick to the deeply appealing and curious plot. Henry’s early falsetto voice and fumbling nature pulled my immediate attention, as did Catherine’s more reasonable attempts to aid her husband on his seemingly simple, two part quest: to be a good king, and to produce a male heir.

I knew going into the play (perhaps from the title alone) that Henry VIII had had some troubles; even the most unwitting of audience members had presumably heard from other spectators around them as to Henry’s difficulties with his kingship, his wives, and his heirs – or lack thereof.

Henry VIII (visual approximation)

Neither of the kingly puppet’s initial goals were soon be reached, yet the actors did well to distract the audience from boredom. Given, more than twenty years were to be covered before intermission. However, it came to my incredibly discomforting (yet awkwardly giddy) surprise to witness the play’s “distractions.” As turned out, these were comprised of shadow puppet sex scenes, shadow puppet birth scenes, dead puppets being thrown over castle walls, talking genetalia, blood squirting about from other beheaded puppets, as well as a gigantic Pope-puppet, gliding about ghost-like. I enjoyed laughing at these events for their pure ridiculousness as well as for their eye-opening natures.

I might now complain briefly, if only for being felt forced to turn nervously and frequently from neighbor to neighbor; human nature compelled us all to catch each other’s reactions and to give our own in return. Like some awkward witnessing of a car crash… between two cars filled with porno magazines… and the cars are driven by puppets.

Nonetheless, Bloody Henry simultaneously builds up and challenges its own fantastic genre of a historical puppet reenactment. For the most part, a balance is found between physical, poetic, and creatively dry humor. Once, when a shadow of Henry is shown eating and becoming progressively larger, a waiter walks up to him several times proclaiming the recent feats of the chefs. “They have certainly outdone themselves this time, your majesty! Here, roasted chicken… (two seconds later, with prolonged emphasis)… it’s roasted!” Certainly, the writers knew where to add such accents that would best tickle my college-aged funny bone. And the effects paid off.

In a way, the play was meant to collect the audience’s awkward, fidgeting laughter. Because at the right times, it became uncontrollable, and, in some historically questionable way, those memories balance all too well with the terrible, all-too-true story of a murderous monarch. Ultimately, viewers will remember these puppets in their own favorite ways. For me, at least, the memory will live whenever purchasing coffee. “So, these beans are roasted…”