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The
mind of "Uncle" Wayne Daigrepont is a vast repository of cartoon
and kiddie-show trivia, with storage bins for bad puns, hokey jokes and
old songs. In other words, my kind of guy. Somewhere between
the Cartoon Channel, vaudeville and Nickelodeon, lies the Land of Uncle
Wayne. In his current puppet show, "The Bepuzzled Pilgrim", he is
aided by a human cartoon named Vatican Lokey whose eyes roll around
in their sockets like marbles. Lokey sings loudly and keeps up a
nimble line of impudent, improvised patter. Lokey plays Xavier, a pilgrim
who wants to put the first Thanksgiving dinner on the table ("I'm thinking
Thursday"), but doesn't know what it should be. The kids in the
audience, of course, tell him. Then, in order to hunt up his main
course, he needs to know what a turkey looks like, and they help him out
there, too. Amid the kiddie (and some adult) participation are numerous
jokey Lokey asides, such as "can you believe a grown man sat up three
nights making that puppet?"
As he stalks the wily "turpuppet", he meets a racoon who sings "Tenderly" (she's "Rosemary Cooney"); a leather-lunged undersea denizen ("Ethel Mermaid"); and a sequined fish I think they should call "Lana Tuna"*. There's also a turtle who wandered in from another puppet show and a seal with a Santa cap: yes, a "Christmas seal"! The appearance of Squanto, the American Indian, cues the entrance of Ashley Thompson as "Little Feather", who looks exactly like one of Tex Avery's nubile cartoon cuties from the '40s and can dance a mean Charleston. A framing device about a little girl who can't go to sleep includes the appearance of her Mom, or rather of Mom's arm, a la "White Fang" and "Black Tooth", whose paws were the only parts we saw of them on the old "Soupy Sales Show". And so it goes, for almost an hour. The kids had a good time, if one is to judge by their eagerness to jump up and be part of the show, and there was adult laughter as well. I only wish Uncle Vatican had asked me if I knew where to find a turkey, because I've seen a few lately. *We accepted David's suggestion, and the puppet now bears the name of "Lana Tuna." Many thanks to David Cuthbert! -Porta-Puppet
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