Things don’t go as planned with the birthday party he’s throwing for himself in Bill’s 44th, a comical, fantastical, and poignant puppet play by creators and master puppeteers Dorothy James and Andy Manjuck, co-presented by Official Puppet Business (the company they founded) and Dream Music Puppetry. Originally commissioned by NYC’s Dixon Place and supported by a production grant from the Jim Henson Foundation for a run in October 2020, the show’s scheduled debut didn’t go as planned either, due to a pandemic delay, but it has subsequently played to critical acclaim at venues in the US and Great Britain, and is back in New York for a limited Off-Off-Broadway engagement at HERE before heading out for its second year at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe, where it was named a finalist for the OffFest Award for Theatre in 2023. See it and you’ll see why.
Set in Bill’s apartment and his intoxicated imagination, the performance is delivered without words but speaks volumes through perfectly synchronized expressive movement and body language, deep breaths and sighs, enhanced by composer Eamon Fogarty’s original recorded score, Manjuck’s evocative sound, and mood lighting by M. Jordan Wiggins. Manipulated in tandem by Manjuck (serving as the life-sized waist-length puppet’s left arm and legs, and working his head) and James (his right arm), both dressed and masked in black, the bald, heavily eyebrowed and mustached, pot-bellied Bill (puppet design by James) enters with a bag of supplies and a cake, then begins to set up for his party with amazing dexterity, unfurling a tablecloth with unexpected contents, hanging a Happy Birthday streamer across the window, stacking the paper plates and hats, placing the helium-filled balloons tableside, tossing trash across the room into a waste basket, and preparing a platter of crudités and alcoholic punch, which he tastes, adds more and more liquor to, and imbibes again and again and again (colorful set and props by Peter Russo, Joseph Silovsky, and Taryn Uhe).
He dances, checks the clock, checks his watch, leans against the wall, answers the door for a delivery or two that go bad, and grows increasingly impatient as he waits for his guests to arrive. He draws faces on a carrot he names Cary (puppeteered by creative collaborator Jon Riddleberger) and the balloons (manipulated by all three), which come to life in a surreal fantasy. The tone, soundscape, and lighting, punctuated with haze, shift dramatically from celebratory to lonely, dark, and desperate, and his drunken mind runs wild, as he is increasingly menaced and watches himself age, in the form of a series of smaller puppets blowing out candles through many years of birthdays.
Is Bill destined to spend this birthday alone or will the party he planned go on? Will the booze wear off, the nightmarish hallucinations come to an end, and the joy return? Or will he remain disappointed, isolated, and dejected? Find out for yourself at HERE, where you can see this inventive, funny, moving, and skillfully performed puppet show for another week, before it leaves for Edinburgh.
Running Time: Approximately 55 minutes, without intermission.
Bill’s 44th plays through Sunday, July 28, 2024, at HERE, 145 Sixth Avenue, NYC. For tickets (priced at $10-100, plus fees), go online.
