Blogcritics The critical lens on today's culture & entertainment
“Because puppets.” Sometimes that’s my whole reasoning when I accept an invitation to review a show. Whether it’s the mystical wizardry of Wakka Wakka or the anarcho-political tomfoolery of Boxcutter Collective, human-operated three-dimensional figures of people, animals, fanciful creatures, monsters, and even inanimate objects can captivate like nothing else.
Concrete Temple Theatre has been telling especially personal stories with puppets for over 20 years. Their latest, PACKRAT: The Quest por la Abundancia, derived from a collaboration with cross-border performing arts producer Contenidos Artísticosis, is a bilingual sequel to PACKRAT (which I didn’t see). But it stands on its own.
The story is a new fable with roots in the lands of the Indigenous Comcáac people of the Mexican state of Sonora. Bud, a literal packrat, and his animal friends embark on a quest for the Basket of Abundance, symbolic of a future of wellbeing and plenty. They squabble, struggle, and learn lessons along the way.
The pacing seems to be aimed at children, but I think if I were a child my own quest would be for something zippier. And I’m not sure I’d appreciate as much as the adult me does the troupe’s cleverness at combining unlikely materials with choreographed movement to create lifelike animal characters.
Indeed the show is full of puppet magic. But flaccid storytelling, clunky pacing, and scattered thematic content weigh it down. This is in part, but only in part, because the puppet characters “speak” recorded dialogue that’s full of long pauses. Those gaps may be meant to account for blocking challenges but too often seem to actually create the need for characters to needlessly shuffle about.
Wave follows wave of surprising techniques and visuals that arrest the eye. Evocative dream sequences, overwhelming natural phenomena, and terrifying predators prod and impress us as they move the story along (although now and then it’s hard to know exactly what we’re seeing). The punchy, anxious music, which borrows elements from Indigenous sounds, coalesces with slyly effective lighting to enliven the action. The creators’ and performers’ seemingly bottomless fonts of skill and ingenuity make the show worth seeing.
But with more focus and tauter pacing it could have reached much higher. The best puppetry can often captivate both adults and youngsters. This effort leaves us frustratedly seeking, like Bud and his companions, an effective leader to guide us to to an elusive Promised Land of theatrical abundance.
PACKRAT: The Quest por la Abundancia is at Dixon Place in Manhattan through January 23, 2026.
