‘City of Frogs’ captivates with large-scale puppetry

Something magical is animating the Forest Theatre.

Paperhand Puppet Intervention’s “City of Frogs” fuses large-scale puppetry, interactive theater and live music, successfully captivating an audience of all ages.

The company’s 13th annual summer show runs on weekends through Sept. 9.

A modern fairy tale, the show is like an imaginatively illustrated children’s book coming to life.

It’s a visual deluge, with handmade puppets ranging from about 2 to 20 feet tall, layers of intricate sets and fantastical masks.

The performance is not only picturesque, but it also excels in the sound department.

A full band and versatile vocalists provide the musical score, the dialogue and spot-on sound effects.

At the Sunday night show, the company encouraged audience participation for creating frog noises. When the amphibians made appearances throughout the evening, a frog chorus pervaded the full stone amphitheater, which seats about 300.

“City of Frogs” follows the quest of a wooden boy, cut free from his marionette strings by the Scissors of Fate. He has one day to search for the lost heart of the girl who was born from an acorn before he must be reattached to his strings.

The story starts out a bit disjointed with a misplaced allusion to Christopher Marlowe’s “Doctor Faustus,” but the show soon settles into a rhythm, which the company maintains until the end.

The plot develops across a series of 13 chapters, taking the wooden boy through the busy city, down to the junk yard and into the sewers to see the dance of the frogs.

Confined to the limited movements of the puppets and people on stilts, the cast relied heavily on the sound effects and silly voices provided by the band to add an element of comedy to the show — and the band did not disappoint.

From the comical man at the dump and his sputtering dump truck to the babbling city folk causing pandemonium in the streets, the energy of the performance didn’t waiver.

Paperhand Puppet Intervention creates its puppets using everything from cardboard and cornstarch to paint and fabric.

The man at the dump in “City of Frogs” teaches the wooden boy that one can take something considered to be trash and create art — which is what the company’s artists have done for this show.

“City of Frogs” is a visual and musical accomplishment for Paperhand Puppet Initiative, and it kept the audience, young and old, engaged until the end.

Contact the desk editor at arts@dailytarheel.com.