CityLife

Provenance @ Library Theatre

LAST year's show, Happy, from the Ronnie Burkett Theatre Of Marionettes, was the winner of the Manchester Evening News Theatre Award as Best Special Entertainment and this is another truly special entertainment from the Canadian puppeteer.

If you've never been lucky enough to see one of his shows, it's difficult to over-emphasise just how different Burkett's uniquely brilliant performances are from the sort of slightly sad and lifeless children's shows one tends to associate with the word puppets.

Burkett's shows are enormously adult, highly imaginative, bawdy, poetic, wry and witty. If you've got a heart and soul, you might even find that a sculpted piece of wood can actually make you cry.

With Burkett himself hiding in plain sight on stage, Provenance (an art-world term related to the authentication of an art work) evocatively details the immensely moving story behind a mysterious painting, as told by the characters discovered in a Viennese brothel.

An ice-skating monkey, a half-mad madam, a tragic war veteran, and an insightful plain girl from Canada are just a few of the characters miraculously conjured into life in this wonderful, life-affirming show.

It might feasibly be even better after a little bit of judicious pruning, but that is mere carping - this really is poetry of the puppets.

Provenance is on at the Library Theatre until Wednesday, May 26. Tickets are priced é14 - é17. Call 0161 236 7100.