Goodbye Mr Muffin

The Ark, Dublin

It is fair to say that Mr Muffin, the adorable star of this exquisitely moving piece of children’s theatre from Denmark, has seen better days. A tawny, frayed creature with small black eyes and a particular fondness for dandelions, almonds and eating his mail, he has now reached the grand old age of seven, which is a good innings for a guinea pig. That is also about the recommended age for audiences to Teater Refleksion’s admirably unsentimental show, which dares to explain death to children – a subject that most adults have similar difficulty comprehending.

Musician Else Anker-Møller plucks a slow melody from her cello, setting a tone poised somewhere between the playful and sombre, while Claus Mandøe introduces us to his puppet with the gentle care reserved for the very young or the very old. Mr Muffin emerges from a shoebox home, sneezing or sighing with the personality of an unsteady rascal, sliding down the slopes of his green canvas garden to read inquiries into his health from worried children: “My dad says that when a guinea pig gets very old it can suddenly die.” Based on the picture book by Ulf Nilsson, Mandøe’s delicate adaptation lets Mr Muffin’s life flash before our eyes. The deceptively simple shoebox functions like a conjuror’s trick, spilling rocking-chair silhouettes through its window, or unfolding to reveal the accumulation of a lifetime.

We learn about his wife and furry children, see recollections of his past as a cucumber-hauling strongman and watch gossamer premonitions of the world to come: a family picnic that carries a brief scare; a night’s sleep that brings an out-of-body dream sequence.

Director Bjarne Sandborg is sensitive to both his audience’s threshold for poignancy and the subtle capacities of his form. Puppet theatre is an expression of life through the inanimate, family pets often supply our first brush with bereavement, and here entertainment represents something profound; the migration of a soul. Combining tenderness and respect for its star and its audience, the show is reassuring without being sugar-coated or glib. Perhaps death is the relief of a well-earned rest, offers Mandøe, or maybe there’s a heaven of happy-ever-afters. Only Mr Muffin knows for sure.

We shall not see his like again.

Ends today

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