Ronnie Burkett’s ‘Wonderful Joe’ approaches elder care, personal insecurities and social marginalization with compassion and humour, while retaining the playwright-performer’s characteristically ribald 16+ audience appeal edge
Canadian artist Ronnie Burkett received the Governor General’s Performing Arts Award for Lifetime Artistic Achievement in 2024. Wonderful Joe, now at the Thousand Islands Playhouse’s Firehall Theatre, offers a concise demonstration of the craft and thematic concerns that have shaped his career.
The production combines meticulous AND extraordinary marionette work with a story about aging, displacement and companionship. Its sentiment is pronounced, but it is frequently balanced by adult humour and an unsentimental view of the hardships of life, which inevitably will come to all of us in the audience.
The Firehall’s intimate scale suits Burkett’s Theatre of Marionettes, allowing the audience to register the detailed construction and deliberate imperfections of the puppets at close range.
Wonderful Joe follows the elderly Joe and his aging dog, Mister, after they are evicted from their apartment building. Faced with separation from each other and from their neighbours, they set out on a final journey through a world populated by figures who reflect its sometimes precariousness and occasional generosity.
Joe’s genteel outlook supplies the production’s central perspective: he finds possibility and hope in neglected places and recognizes humanity among people others overlook. A sequence involving a troupe of unhoused performers in a cardboard theatre makes the audience, rather than the marionette spectators, the true recipient of the messages in the play-within-a-play.
Among the figures encountered are Mother Nature, Santa Claus, Jesus and the Tooth Fairy. Their exchanges mix fable, satire and colourful language; the humour is deliberately irreverent, though it generally serves the production’s broader questions about belief, responsibility and care.
The marionette work remains the principal attraction, but the production is equally structured around moral parable. At times the solo show’s lessons are stated more directly than its imagery requires; at others, the marionettes convey the ideas with notable economy.
Burkett voices and manipulates the full cast. He’s a marvel, a gem of an artist and a hell of a storyteller, full of whimsy, charm, and magic. His performance moves fluently among distinct voices and temperaments, and his visible presence alongside the puppets creates a productive tension between technical control and theatrical illusion. The result is polished, playful and occasionally naughty and ribald. And that came into play when one of the marionette’s heads accidentally broke free during the performance. Burkett didn’t flinch. In true professional style and his unique humour, he cursed and said this moment would be discussed later, after the performance, during the Talkback. And it was. A perfect setup for those of us who wanted to stay and listen to the Canadian artistic icon.
John Alcorn’s music and songs support the action while adding understated commentary on the characters and their circumstances.
Further plot details are best left undisclosed as the production depends on the gradual revelation of its encounters and images.
The final sequence, involving Joe, the depressed runaway teenager Getti and Mister, draws the production’s themes together with heartfelt emotional clarity. Its effect is heightened by Burkett’s restrained manipulation and by the contrast between the scene’s tenderness and the harsher episodes that precede it.
The production ultimately argues for humility, mutual care and trust in forces larger than the individual.
Wonderful Joe is a carefully crafted and affecting production whose surface-level puppet theatre is matched by a clear social conscience, most notably in the Catholic teachings of social justice including: ‘Life and Dignity of the Human Person’, ‘Call to Family, Community and Participation’, ‘Rights and Responsibilities’, ‘Care for the Poor and Vulnerable’, ‘Solidarity’ and ‘Care for God’s Creation’.
While Burkett may not have intended these connections, they are there. Thankfully. Thank you for continually upholding them in the production, Ronnie.
The artist’s comical precision and grounded focus give Wonderful Joe sustained theatrical force. Its final message of living with humility, maintaining grace and giving thanks for this life we have; love of others; and trust that a higher power will continue to be in control continues to radiate in this production, which travels to Montreal soon.
Please see it here at the Firehall or in Montreal if you can.
Running time: approximately one hour and thirty minutes with no interval/intermission
The production runs to October 4 at the Firehall Theatre, 185 South Street, Gananoque. For tickets: www.thousandislandsplayhouse.com, call the Box Office (613) 382-7020 or visit: 1000islandsplayhouse.com/wonderful-joe/
THOUSAND ISLANDS PLAYHOUSE presents
Wonderful Joe, A Production of Ronnie Burkett Theatre of Marionettes
16+/Adults Only
Wonderful Joe was created with the support of the Explore and Create Programme of the Canada Council for the Arts
Marionette, Costume & Set Design by Ronnie Burkett
Music by John Alcorn
Production Manager/Artistic Associate: Terri Gillis
Associate Producer: John Lambert
