Trouble Puppet Presents The Jungle at Salvage Vanguard Theater [Review]

We're all meat. Or, puppets, as it were. That's essentially the message of Upton Sinclair's brilliant, wrenching 1906 novel, The Jungle. The book, a stark depiction of poverty, corruption, and brutality in America's turn-of-the-last-century meatpacking industry, is an indictment of an unjust system that affects everybody in the food chain. Heavy subject matter for a puppet show, and yet, Trouble Puppet have made magic in their theatrical adaptation, now playing at the Salvage Vanguard Theatre. The production's sharpness rises from the use of the puppet-actor relationship to reflect Sinclair's argument that the stockyard system in Chicago treated men no better than the cattle they were “processing.”

This use of mode as meaning is a Trouble Puppet specialty: see their Frankenstein for another take on humans as puppets. But that show had a bitter humor to temper its painful questions. Here, there's some sweetness (like when Jurgis Rukos, the story's immigrant hero, shyly woos his new wife), but that's about it. The beautiful staging keeps the audience watching even it'd be easier to turn our heads and stop our ears. A gorgeous soundtrack, including thumping tuba an the occasional lilting melody, evokes both the plodding, mechanical monotony of the slaughterhouse and the Lithuanian village the Rukos family left behind The stage picture is dingy and dark, from the greys and greens of the factory worker uniforms to the bleak, dim factory floor. Lighting throws gorgeous shadows and creates variety, especially when a funeral procession makes its way across the stage.

But it is the note-perfect relationship between teams of actors and their puppets that gives the show its heart. Teams work through the repetitive process of cattle slaughter, casually handing the same cow puppet back around for another go, then echoing that process of replacement when a worker is injured and removed from the line. When the foreman menaces a puppet worker, rage and fear is reflected in the human actor's face, as well. In one memorable moment, Jurgis works a particularly nasty job with another worker. Machinery jams and all there is to be done is to get back to work as quickly as possible. Death is imminent, and I found myself covering my eyes in fear of the inevitable. It's just a puppet, but in the moment that doesn't matter. And that's the power of what Trouble Puppet does: putting a human actor through a meat grinder runs the risk of being as campy as Little Shop of Horrors, but the simulacra of puppetry can humanize even that which we'd most like to ignore.

This is not a happy play. We've got plenty of those. Here, instead, is a piece of theater that makes a powerful statement, both as a reminder of a dark time in American history, and a pointed argument that not much has changed. The Jungle is vital, beautiful, didactic art, and highly recommended viewing.