I was pretty sure that you couldn't go wrong when you take puppets and have them misbehave all over the place, and as it turns out, I was right. Drunk Puppet Nite came and went, and I am here to say that I laughed my ass off.

Why is it that puppets doing things that humans can also do is so much funnier? Puppets "liberate" us from human constraints, some say, but really, isn't theater supposed to do the same thing? Yet there is something about sticking a sock on one's hand and shoving it out into the world that makes a performer somehow bolder, and even the dullest dullard in Dullsville can become balls-out hilarious with the aid of a sock.

DPN was an evening of puppet skits written and performed by different, uh, artists. A pair of puppets called Suzy and Nice-Nice (played by Billy Jarcho, Jim Farrell, and Cathy Desmet) offered the best puppet action of the evening. Suzy, a preternaturally intelligent child-thing, looks like an exploded stereo speaker and has a knowing baby voice; Nice-Nice is her pet, and he (?) looks like a bit of coiled intestine with curly harem-shoes and a voracious appetite for human ejectamenta. Suzy imagines herself a kind of simple-things Heloise, and delivers little lectures on ear-cleaning and cake-baking, but all her projects go horribly wrong.

There was an inordinate amount of poop at DPN, perhaps the one thing that humans won't do onstage. Similarly, in Scot Augustson's shadow-puppet Ballad of the Sad Puppy, a man ditches his pretty, kind, successful girlfriend to fuck a dog he has fallen in love with. But the problem with subversiveness and unacceptability is that the stakes ratchet higher and higher until political fables (The Hungry) and Barbie flambé (Phillip's Surprise) fall quite flat. You cannot follow poop with politics. Still, I laughed until I hurt. Then, after the puppets had disgraced themselves in every way possible, we could get on with the very serious business of Drunk Humans Nite.

Drunk Puppet Nite was only scheduled for a two-night run last weekend, so if you missed it, you missed it. But maybe if enough of us call Re-bar (323-0388) and demand another weekend of drunken puppets, they'll bring back Suzy and Nice-Nice.