The sickness which no doctor can treat; the wound which can only be healed by the weapon which dealt the blow; Love. Movies, musicals, live-stage performances, television programs, radio dramas— you name it— have all attempted to conquer the subject, explore it or explain it, celebrate it, degrade it, deconstruct it— the path to love in our lives, particularly that interwove into our digestible media, is unending. But never has it felt so real, so relatable, and so utterly accessible than it does with Alex & Olmsted’s production of Hubba Hubba: A New Show About Romantic Love. The puppet-masters of Baltimore & Beyond (winners of multiple Jim Henson Foundation grants) Alex Vernon and Sarah Olmsted Thomas have collaborated once more to bring you a visually and emotionally enchanting masterpiece, centered around that one indescribably feeling: Love. Devised by Alex & Olmsted with lighting by Tori Muñoz, this delightful and engaging exploration of love features physical comedy, audience-suggested improv, innovative storytelling, and of course, puppets! It’s an hour’s worth of remarkable and felicitously enticing theatre that you won’t want to miss while it’s in town.
Love conjures all sorts of connotations— hearts and the color red specifically. Hubba Hubba has no shortage of the latter to be sure. The makeshift table and velvet-curtained mini-stage as well as the complete sartorial selection— true to their signature style— of the dueting performers is bathed in glorious shades of the romantic hue. Flanked on either side of what becomes ‘center stage’ (where the table and mini-stage are set) are floor-to-ceiling red strings, adorned with ‘Valentines’ if you will; red-envelopes that are occasionally plucked up and opened to be read throughout the performance. Even the phone with the infinite phone cord, used for audience involvement, is red. Alex & Olmsted utilize the color in just the perfect balance; saturated but not soaked, plentiful but not overbearing.
Of course the show is more than just observing the pair’s fascinating use of love’s iconic color. Tori Muñoz makes exceptional use of subtle lighting cues throughout the performance, either by creating shadows for the pun-packed ‘Love Letters’ vignette or during the ‘8th Grade Dance’ segment with the glorious glow of the mirror ball. Muñoz’ light hand, no pun intended, results in an immersive theatrical experience as the lighting is adjusted flawlessly from vignette to vignette, keeping the audience transfixed on what’s happening.
The overall experience of Hubba Hubba has a unique and curious ‘meta’ quality to it. You are absolutely watching a performance about Love. But you’re simultaneously watching this pair of performers navigate what it’s like to put on a performance, including navigating their own complicated feelings toward one another. It’s a bit like watching The Muppet Show where you’re getting vignettes and little snippets of stories but you’re also experiencing the behind-the-scenes-only-in-front-of-your-eyes at the same time. It tickles the fancy in ways one finds difficult to accurately describe.
Alex & Olmsted’s approach to puppetry is sheer genius. There’s a variety of puppets incorporated into the work, as well as physicality that makes their puppetry more than just a visually stunning art, it allows their narrative world-building to becomes a striking masterpiece of emotions, feelings, pathos, and intricate connections. There’s a vignette about a flower— a daisy maybe? – who is clearly “in love” with the sun. Watching Alex Vernon puppet this particular flower, seeing his wildly expressive eyes, hearing his wildly fanciful protestations as the Daisy tracks the sun’s (puppeted on a wire-pole by Sarah Olmsted Thomas) movements, every day from rise to set, is extraordinary. This particular vignette has a darkly humorous and quirky conclusion, which makes you truly appreciate the depths of Alex & Olmsted’s creative mind.
Shadow puppets, hand puppets, all sorts of puppetry is included in the program. The head-popping puppets complete with their own sound effects are particularly delightful. The breath-tube amoeba puppets are wondrous strange, featured in an early vignette that explores ‘romantic love in the primordial ooze.’ There is no shortage of novel and awe-inspiring little minutia featured throughout these vignettes, whether they feature puppets or not. The truly marvelous factor of all these little stories is how accurately Vernon and Thomas capture the emotional essence of a moment. When they appear together at the ‘8th Grade Dance’ everything from their shared facial expressions, nervously glancing back and forth to one another, to their awkward body language effectively captures that unnerving experience of being ‘that outsider kid who nobody wanted to dance with.’ Or in the vignette about the ‘Blind Date’ (which relies heavily on audience participation, the result of which is chaotic hilarity) where again the pair encapsulate all of the nervous antics and perilous mistakes one can make when jittery about a first date with a stranger.
The masterpiece moment, as far as I’m concerned, is arguably one of the smaller instances in this performance. Deceptively simple, there is astonishing artistry, fluid poetry of motion, and utterly fascinating exploration of a relationship… as told with two pieces of string. Constructing a brilliant narrative, which is not only engaging but has your audience deeply invested in the journey, of a romantic tale— told with string, ordinary, white-rope-grade string— is a true mark of how imaginative, expressive, and innovative the theatrical workings of Alex and Olmsted truly are.
It’s a remarkable explorative piece of theatre, filled with laughter, touching moments, some places where you can squirm a little because you can relate a bit too much, and much, much more. Alex & Olmsted’s Hubba Hubba is able to say in just over an hour what songs, movies, novels, and human beings have been trying to say for centuries about the enigmatic, infuriating, and unyielding experience that is Love. Do not miss this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to catch Hubba Hubba at its world premiere here in Baltimore (before it hits the road for Sante Fe, NM) and celebrate this extraordinary theatrical endeavor with Alex & Olmstead.
Running Time: Approximately 70 minutes with no intermission
Hubba Hubba: A New Show About Romantic Love plays through April 2nd 2023 with Alex & Olmsted at Baltimore Theatre Project— 45 W. Preston Street in Baltimore, MD. For tickets call the box office at (410) 752-8558 or purchase them online.
