A prominent German company named Theater Im Wind featured this week in the International Puppet Festival and presented an unusually subtle and emotional puppet show based on a true story. It is a tale of the Nazi holocaust, of an already elderly man who meets a young woman and her baby in the 1930s, and loves them.
But she is a zigeuner, of the gypsy class, and the camps eventually consume her and her child, although not all at once. In this version, the narrator-puppeteer meets him at the age of 90, and lives with him for a while. His story and survivor personality are lovingly recreated in flashback.
The old man figure, about two feet high, soon becomes real, a character to empathise with - which means that the piece is not without humour in its broad humanity.
He is manipulated with great skill by Enno Podehl, most effectively assisted by Anne Podehl. When in narrator mode - he also does the old man's voice - he is accompanied by a sensitive simultaneous translation from Miriam Lambert.
The International Puppet Festival runs until Sunday; information and booking at 01-2800974
