'Mr. Punch,' from Rogue Artists Ensemble, is packed

IF THERE was an award for most imagery per square inch in a play, this year's statuette would almost certainly go to the Rogue Artists Ensemble's production of "The Tragical Comedy or Comical Tragedy of Mr. Punch."

A densely packed epic about one boy's adventures during a seaside stay with his grandfather, this memory play overflows with nightmarish grotesquerie designed equally to repulse and fascinate.

Adapted from the graphic novel by Neil Gaiman and Dave McKean, the production combines puppetry, masks, video, dance, shadow play and a giant crocodile head to reproduce the spirit of the book's illustrations. Straddling the line between high-tech and low-tech, the show, at the Bootleg Theater through Aug. 31, is a genre-busting assemblage of competing theatrical styles.

"Creating an illusion in a small space is a lot like putting on a magic show," said Megan Owings, dramaturge at Rogue Artists. "That's the blessing and the curse of working in such a small theater."

First produced last year, the revised "Mr. Punch" contains video projections of McKean's original illustrations. Drawings flicker in the background as the cast performs a scene on stage -- a kind of visual homage to the illustrator, who granted the company permission to use his artwork.

To create the effects, video artist Brian White scanned the illustrations and used PhotoShop to erase speech balloons. He then imported the images into After Effects, a program that allowed him to create an animated loop for certain scenes. In all, the play contains nearly 70 original video sequences, ranging from a few seconds to several minutes. "The idea was to integrate the video into the set so it was a fundamental part of the scenery, not just ancillary to it," White says.

With so much happening on stage, it's sometimes hard to know where to look in "Mr. Punch." Sean Cawelti, the show's director and the company's artistic director, likens the play to getting lost in a Rubik's Cube. "The play melds together physical spaces as well as different time periods," he says.

Much of the action takes place in shadows and semi-darkness, a decision partly inspired by a line from the novel: "The pre-dawn world lacked colour: there was grey in abundance and a strange strained blue."

Lighting designer Mel Domingo says the director kept pushing her to make scenes darker. "We want people to see what's on stage, but we also want to keep the grittiness," she says. "It's about sacrificing a little of the visuals for the atmosphere."