We are in good company. Metiria Turei’s latest Twitter indicates she is present and ‘looking forward to some sick puppetty fun’. And sick puppetty fun it is, perfectly geared to a colourful alternative audience, relaxed in the enchanting ambience of what appears to be an exotic gypsy cavern.

Rats Republica, originating in Waitati, have sprung out of the cellar for the Dunedin Fringe Festival, and truly epitomise Fringe: exuberant risk-taking performers, innovative creative concepts, rough and ready technology.

The impromptu stage, hung with black curtains, reveals the simple bedroom of a string puppet, whose melancholy face bears a resemblance to Dickens, but who is reclusive poet Walter Greevens. We watch him cough and pee and try to write, complaining in a gravelly voice of writer’s block.

But we know from the prologue that poor Walter has only three days to live, and hence, to prevent the Death of Poetry, his very own Muse (so long absent) has been instructed to descend on him in human form, to reignite his creativity. Sure enough, she presently crash-lands on him in his bed. 

Walter is initially not too impressed with his Muse, a cosy string puppet with grey hair and apron "with rest-home appeal," he notes. "You look more like you’d inspire knitting patterns." But she knows her job – for inspiration you must literally breathe in fresh air, and so she drags him out into the real world.

The world outside has changed during his self-imposed incarceration, and we explore it along with Walter, from a restaurant with no actual food, to strange little alien children: rod-controlled silver balloons, that pop to shower us with coloured feathers. In the extraordinary brothel scene, a luscious big red vagina, bedecked with pearls, slips from beneath the madam’s skirts, to give old Walter a good seeing to…very rude!

Meantime he is being tracked by sinister Death, in floating draperies, wafted through the audience bunraku style… Can the Muse inspire Walter to one last poem before Death catches up with him?

The master-mind and leader of this fascinating conglomeration of artists is Sandra Muller, but there may well be ten or more making up Rats Republica. The programme is not much help, eschewing anything as boring as crew notes, in favour of a detailed and fictional Who’s Who entry on our poet, Walter Greevens (b 1921). Greevens actually appears to be the alter-ego of American poet Wallace Stevens (b 1879), whose lovely poetry is quoted throughout.

Apart from neatly-crafted Walter and his Muse, the puppets tend to be rather ad-hoc, and some are flopped around, rather than manipulated. Perhaps the vocal work could be a little more polished. But the company have made vivid use of visual arts, rather than actors, to tell a story (Edward Gordon Craig would love it!) and it is altogether exciting to see puppetry given a serious chance to make adult theatrical magic. Ravishing, Rats Republica! 

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