Two-hour puppet show. Two-hour puppet show. Two-hour puppet show.
Two. Hour. Puppet. Show. Seventy-three minutes into Bloody
Henry, the all-puppet reconstruction of the life ‘n’ loves ‘n’
stillborns ‘n’ severed heads of King Henry VIII, the lights come up.
Intermission. “Divorced, beheaded, died, divorced, beheaded, survived,”
I count on my fingers, remembering ye olde mnemonic. Seventy-three
minutes and we were only through “divorced, beheaded.” Two wives in.
FOUR WIVES TO GO. Holy papal dispensation on a communion wafer, this
shit is long.
Long, but awesome. Though needlessly heavy on the minutiae of Tudor
politics, the puppetry (mostly Bunraku action, supplemented by shadow
puppets and cut-paper animation) is magnificent. The uncanny little
dolls seem to breathe and think and emote, their slapstick foibles and
offhand peripheral movements as convincing as any human actor’s.
Bloody Henry tells its eponymous tale with brutally dark
humor and frank sexuality. (Puppet blowjob! Kingly masturbation!
Talking vagina!) The voice-acting is superb—particularly Gavin
Cummins as the increasingly blustering Henry. You can hear him
get fatter. There are occasional sarcastic bright spots (“Dear Lord:
Thank you for my daughter. She is very nice. Though I would surely
appreciate a son! Your servant, Henry VIII”), but the unrelenting
blackness feels cruel at times. Watching Catherine of Aragon’s 900
stillbirths, each accompanied by a fetus tossed from the ramparts with
a marshy “sploosh,” gave my womb sympathy pains.
Creator/director/writer/designer/fabricator Brian Kooser seems a bit
in love with his own writing, which is not where his genius
lies. His genius lies in puppets and creating surreal, macabre moments:
Henry’s creepy hallucinations; a massive, gliding, locomotive pope
(half-pope/half-building—terrifying); the eerie, aforementioned
breathing of the puppets; Anne Boleyn’s shrieks. If it were half as
long, I would have enjoyed it twice as much. 
