*Puppet Up,* Oct 2 2026
I saw *Puppet Up* at the Tribeca Performing Arts Center. My friend Alisa saw the show in San Francisco and raved about it. She described it as a puppet show for adults, an extraordinary combination of puppetry and improv comedy.
The show was introduced by its co-creator, Brian Henson, the son of Jim and Jane Henson. His parents created The Muppets and his work is part of that tradition. He explained how his father created the Muppets to be seen on television and how the manipulation of the puppets were specifically tailored for medium. The puppeteer holds the puppet over their head and rather than looking at the puppet, they watch a monitor, to see how the puppet looks onscreen. That way the puppet can look directly into the camera, in a sense looking directly at the viewer. *Puppet Up* was staged to be both onscreen and behind the scenes - - we saw the puppeteers onstage doing their thing but also saw the show projected onto two huge screens on the sides of the stage. I was surprised that I spent about 85% of the time watching the screens, rather than watching the performers. I was fascinated to see that the camera stays absolutely still, the camera never moved during the entire performance. The puppets moved around the frame rather than having the camera follow them around.
Henson was interested in doing something different with puppets so he worked with actor Patrick Bristow to create a puppet improv show (that's Bristow in the clip above, you might recognize him from the Ellen sitcom). Bristow had worked with The Groundlings, the Los Angeles improv group that spawned Laraine Newman, Phil Hartman, Pee Wee Herman, Kristen Wiig, many other major comedy performers. Henson asked Bristow if it would work to have puppets do improv. Bristow said no, because improv required the performers to be looking into each other's eyes to have a connection and read where the sketch was going. Henson toyed with it and saw that it would work for puppets because the puppets had that connection to each other! Or if you prefer, the puppeteers had that connection to each other through their puppets.
The show opened with a cute song called "Puppet Up." It featured a few implied and actual F-bombs. I felt like we could have used less of that - - a well-placed F-bomb can have great power but hearing one every ten minutes, it's not as funny anymore.
Bristow was the host of the show, interacted with the audience, and got suggestions from them for sketches in the show. One of the first sketches was based on The Dating Game. Bristow took suggestions from the audience for things that would make the three bachelors a disaster. One of them had his own podcast, one of them was into raw chicken, and the third one was...a homosexual. The bachelorette asked the first two guys to introduce themselves. She came to the third guy and he said, "I'm David and I work at Macy's." Screams of laughter from the audience.
The highlight of the first half was a sketch that relied heavily on a couple from the audience. Let's call them Lisa and Ben. They were brought onto the stage and Bristow asked how they met, etc. They had been married for four years, they had their first date in high school. Aw! Bristow asked what they did on their first date - - they hung out at the mall in Bayside, Queens.
Two puppeteers played the roles of Lisa and Ben. Bristow told them to ring the hotel-desk-clerk-style bell if the puppets got something right and to hit the WOMP buzzer if something was wrong.
PUPPET BEN: I'm really excited to be on a date with you. I've had my eye on you in chemistry class.
BEN: WOMP.
PUPPET BEN: In shop class.
BEN: WOMP WOMP.
PUPPET BEN: In civics class.
BEN: DING DING.
The puppets started walking through the mall and came upon a particular store. I mentioned at the start of this review that it was a puppet show for adults and some of the content was coyly adults only. This was one of those moments.
PUPPET LISA: Hm, this store looks interesting. Oh wow, I've never seen one like THAT before.
PUPPET BEN: Yeah, me neither.
PUPPET LISA: Ben, how do you like this? Do you think you could find a use for some pink fur-lined handcuffs?
[audience laughs]
LISA: DING DING DING
It was the biggest laugh of the night.
The second half opened with an old lady usher puppet telling us she and her sisters had performed in that theater years before, as a dance act. She asked people to guess what the name of their signature dance was. The winner (an audience suggestion, natch) was The Sugar Booger. She did her dance and while it was delightful it didn't have any discernable sugar or booger content. Which was fine by me. I was amazed by the video technology in this number - - there was just one puppet being used but somehow the video showed six puppets doing the dance together, facing different directions and slightly different in the timing of their movements.
They did a satire on the opening credits of a James Bond movie. The audience-suggested title of the movie was *Pizza Rat* and the theme song was (partially) improvised. The visuals were steeped in the Bond tradition. The high point was a moment when a handgun filled the screen, then slowly turned to face directly at the camera, revealing the fact that from that angle the gun looked like a curvy woman's silhouette. The audience let out an "Oo!" and applauded.
There was one sketch that went on too long, an intermittently amusing sketch about a movie being made. The lead character was a sexy opthamologist and it took place on the Eiffel Tower. I guess improv is always hit or miss but it seems like one of the essential skills is knowing when a sketch is over.
The best sketch of all was one that most deeply used an audience member. A young guy named Brad, who had no experience as a puppeteer, was brought onto the stage to be the third character in a sketch. The story was a guy's boss tells him they're about to have a meeting with an important client but it would be a disaster unless someone washed the windows. The guy suggests bringing in his brother Brad, who's a talented window washer. The two professional puppeteers were hilariously merciless in their criticism of Brad - - the human Brad would bit by bit let his arm droop down and the puppet playing his brother would grab him and say, "Stand up straight!" Puppet Brad would veer away from the camera and the boss would say, "Look at me when I'm talking to you!"
The moment came when it was time for puppet Brad to wash the windows. Puppeteer Brad was remarkably good at moving around the periphery of the frame and moving his arms around. The audience cheered big time. It was touching that we had been laughing at his ineptitude just a few minutes before and yet now we were genuinely impressed and proud of his ability.
They did an elaborate song called "The End," possibly a riff on the song by The Doors...? It featured seemingly all of the puppets we had seen during the show, that was a neat trick. And they did an encore - - Bristow said, "Do you want to see some nude puppets?" Of course we did. The "nude puppets" did a reprise of the song "Puppet Up," but this time it was the hands and forearms of the puppeteers with no puppets on them. Hence, "nude puppets." Clever.
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