Dorothy James and Andy Manjuck in Bill’s 44th. Photo: Richard Termine

Bill’s 44th, a delightfully odd (and occasionally heartbreaking) piece of puppet theater having a run at HERE on its way to the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, starts on a joyful note: The titular Bill (a puppet operated by Dorothy James and Andy Manjuck, the show’s creators) rips off a page of his calendar, to reveal glittering letters announcing “Bill’s 44th.” He hangs a Happy Birthday banner. He gets everything ready: The table is set. The (highly alcoholic) punch is mixed. The crudités are arranged. The dip is *chef’s kiss*. All that’s missing are his fellow revelers. And thus begins the quotidian anguish of one of life’s surest techniques for turning a joyful event into an anxiety spiral: waiting for party guests to arrive. (Is that just me? I don’t think so.)

One of the joys of the piece is how instantly recognizable Bill and his environment are: We’ve all been to that birthday party. It’s an urban apartment, nothing fancy and far too small for a crowd, but Bill’s proud of it. It’s a time just a bit in the past–the apartment’s furnishings include a VCR (which gets displayed when Bill’s mother sends him a video) and a landline phone on the wall. Bill is a little fussy, verging on fastidious; he smooths his eyebrows and checks his look in the mirror every time he thinks he hears a knock on his door. He’s dressed up enough that he freaks out when he spills punch on his sweater, but not so much that people can tell how hard he’s trying. He’s got a few dorky white guy dance moves. He’s practiced a faux nonchalant lean as he waits for his guests to arrive. And waits. And waits. And waits, hitting the punch hard and dying a little inside with every footstep in the hallway. Bill never utters a word (the show has an original score by Eamon Fogarty but is otherwise silent), and his puppet head doesn’t really do facial expressions, yet we see every nuance of his emotional journey in James and Manjuck’s creation of his body language.

When the only knocks on his door turn out to be the delivery of a gift from his mother and a wrong-apartment pizza guy, Bill and his party veer off into a much stranger and darker place. His crudité platter and balloons come to life as either friend or foe, and he’s forced to confront his own memories of birthdays past (and a slightly mystifying tiny homunculus) to survive his birthday present. 

The plot may be simple, but the puppetry is ingenious (and I suspect much, much harder than it looks to get as natural-seeming as it is), with Manjuck and James operating Bill in concert with precision. Bill comprises a life-size puppet torso, with Manjuck and James each wearing one arm of Bill’s sweater and contributing one hand to his action (for most of the show; there’s one section where Manjuck takes Bill solo while James does other work). Manjuck operates Bill’s head and his legs serve as Bill’s legs; James’s other arm supports Bill’s midsection.

The puppetry sprinkles in additional surprises too—with the aid of third puppeteer Jon Riddleberger, other household objects get in on the act: “Carey” the friendly carrot stick grows to life-size. Balloons become those annoying guests who start passing around drugs without asking. Bill pops in the video his mother sent, and then we see memory-Bill of birthdays past, aging from toddler to the present man before our eyes. (The aging of miniature puppet-Bill through a series of hairpieces and body language cues is another piece of puppetry packing a surprising emotional punch.) We also get a tiny malevolent homunculus-Bill, who must be pursued around the apartment like a giant mosquito asking to be swatted, and who almost succeeds in taking over the party. This creature’s purpose is not entirely clear, but he feels like some deeply buried self-destructive part of Bill’s psyche; swatting him down may keep the night from going to an even darker and more self-destructive place. (I’m not certain whether we’re meant to note Bill’s alcohol consumption as a symptom only of his current disappointment or as an area of general concern, but he definitely keeps going back to strengthen the alcohol content of the punch.

James and Manjuck are perfectly attuned, not only doing the puppeteer’s dance on the line of being the performer and disappearing into their prop, but doing it in tandem. (I often find it almost impossible to open a potato chip bag with both of my hands working together; imagine if one of those hands was being run by a different brain!) They bring Bill to life with such vulnerability that our collective heart breaks a little when Bill turns a carrot stick into a party guest, and with such a clear emotional journey that we feel Bill’s outrage and pang of rejection when two of his balloon “guests” hook up inappropriately. And just when we think the evening is doomed to end on a sad and sour note, the creators use the audience to generate a measure of redemption. We’re delighted to celebrate Bill’s 44th with him.