The Lamplighter's Lament

There’s an Italian expression that often features in long descriptions of certain Renaissance paintings: chiaroscuro, or literally, light-dark. The theory is that bright, vibrant colours contrasted with thick, dark shadows create a striking, majestic beauty, such as in a Caravaggio painting.

Rich Rusk and Gomito Theatre Company’s The Lamplighter’s Lament is, for lack of better words, an exploration of chiaroscuro. Its story is vague like a distant memory, open to interpretation and limited only by your imagination. Three performers who uniformly look like the Mad Hatter mix puppetry, music and tricks of light to paint the picture of a windswept seaside town, and the lonely existence of a lamplighter.

Throughout the show the stage remains as dark as the depths of the lamplighter's soul. Firefly-like wisps of light, at once the lamplighter’s torch and his ardent spirit, dance constantly in the shadows in a curious ritual that gently brings life to the puppetry, the ghostly stage lights and the myth.

Bedlam Theatre’s acoustics lend much to the invaluable music and sound effects, without which the play would have undoubtedly felt dour. The pre-recorded accompaniment brings something more profound to the puppetry’s whimsy, segueing from softly poignant piano tunes to Celtic folksongs to the caressing sounds of surf.

It’s a relaxing, charmingly incomprehensible show that brings out the troupe’s bohemian exuberance in rainbow colours. There’s a striking chiaroscuro beauty to the visual effects, but one that becomes banal through repetition, and one that all-too-lazily relies on the sound system and the audience’s generous imagination for sustenance.