Lee Breuer’s ‘La Divina Caricatura,’ a Bunraku Puppet Pop Opera, Delights and Confounds at La MaMa

You can still catch performances of La Divina Caricatura, a bunraku puppet pop opera by Lee Breuer, at experimental theatre club La MaMa in New York. World premiere performances will run through December 22.

Part 1, "The Shaggy Dog," tells the unlikely story of a dog named Rose and her mad love affair with her master John. The opera follows Rose the dog as she makes a Dantean pilgrimage for love and, hopefully, Paradiso.

La Divina Caricatura has been described as "Dante for puppets and cartoons." Breuer's trilogy of fictions with animals in the starring roles has its own Inferno, Purgatorio and Paradiso. The mixed-media pop-opera completes Breuer's Animations series and draws on material that stretches all the way back to Breuer's doo-wop opera Sister Suzie Cinema, first conceived as a poem in 1975.

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