In their experimental, low-fi, dreamlike show, The Veiled Isle, Wellington band Birdfeeder are rekindling audiences’ imaginations throughout Te Waipounamu. A socially-distanced audience meets together in Ōtepoti’s Playhouse Theatre on an auspiciously temperate winter night. The stage is fronted with a muslin screen and the silhouette of an arrangement of ferns welcomes us.

Singer and keyboardist Stephanie Cairns, bass guitarist Marley Mokomoko-Young and drummer Josh Harris present us their own repertoire of songs. These songs have a driving, haunting energy. The band laments climate change, in menacing or in soothing tones with surreal and powerful lyrics, “…beware the hills, beware the sky…”. Cairns has a wide vocal range, passing from frantic and operatic to softened and earthy. Being experimental, the band also bends the ambience of their songs through whistled impersonations of native birdsong, a sound track of rain, mouth clicks, and a tone filter. Here in Dunedin, Tom Acklin provides sound tech.

Initially unseen, puppeteers Zoe Higgins and Pája Neuhöferová entrance the audience. Each carries a torch, they project whimsical props on the muslin. It’s enigmatic. There’s a rickety boat reminiscent of William Steig, a lace or driftwood ancestress, a teapot, cut-outs of houses, skylines and eyes.The strength of this puppetry is how its two dimensionality morphs. As the torches are on the move, sharp outlines dilate and diffuse, or they contract. The audience comes to believe in a puppeteer’s ‘walking’ fingers being true legs, and when, in this moment, the light slips backwards to reveal the musicians, magnifying the silhouette of a snapping snare drum or a hand flinching on the keyboard, a singer’s jumper or their teeth, the light work is dynamic; sublime.

When shadows leak beyond the screen onto the walls of the theatre, a sailing boat is reiterated in a blown-out scale. In this way, the theatre itself participates.On occasion, audience members shield their eyes from the direct torch light. In finale, the torches cause the ferns to seemingly advance on or even overcome the audience. This recalls the Lumière brothers’ 1895 film of a train advancing, in which audience members are rumoured to have run from the cinema, being so invested in the illusion.

Late in the show, the puppeteers’ choreography is to be commended. In rota, each holds a torch aloft and casts a downlight on one of the props, like for museum artefacts. They proceed slowly, as in a ritual. And this is Birdfeeder in a nutshell. This is their characteristic, both sonically and visually: they’re playful, reverent and relevant.

Surreal, genuine, innovative and unique. The Veiled Isle receives resounding applause.

Copyright © in the review belongs to the reviewer