Norwich Puppet Theatre (Norfolk and Norwich Festival)

Norwich Puppet Theatre (Norfolk and Norwich Festival)

Four actor-puppeteers and puppets in a sleazy downtown bar hold sway, drawing us in to their bar stories with elegant choreography and the comedy of fringe-of-life-depression.

The alcoholic businessmen, mistaking his wife for a dog, cannot bear to go home. The tiny Action Man mission-impossible plumber drowns. A wrinkled Chinese cleaner, so drawn into the book he's reading, murders it. They mix the boundaries between manipulator and manipulated.

And it is all touchingly beautiful. A bar of identical ordinary little guys who parody paperback detective fiction, flowing in and out of reality.

These characters are puppets, yet they're also the puppeteer/satirists, ever in sight, one voice with their puppets. Equally, these puppets have an autonomy that is disturbing and part of the alchemy with costumes, apt music and talented performers.