"Who’d think? It is kind of stunning honestly. When I started on that ATP stage 25 years ago I don’t think they or I thought that this would hit. There wasn’t really an audience or circuit for that sort of thing. The fact that people kept coming back is why we have a 25th anniversary, it could have been a very clever one or five year experiment otherwise. What is even scarier is I realized I started doing shows for cash around Alberta when I was 14 so it is 40 years of being a working puppeteer and 25 for the Theatre of Marionettes. That kind of depressed me."

Ronnie Burkett is on the phone from Edmonton, on an off day from his new show Penny Plain playing at the Citadel Theatre. The show, receiving rave reviews, was created to mark 25 years of his Theatre of Marionettes. The company has spawned shows like Tinka’s New Dress, Streets of Blood, Happy and Ten Days On Earth, as well as multiple awards and accolades. Much like a parent, Burkett is challenged to pick a favorite in the 25 years.

"I think each one was what came out of me at the time. I have never been that guy who had a marketing mind where I would build up the strength of something that really worked. If I was more clever or Cirque du Ronnie I would have done Tinka Returns, Son of Tinka, that sort of thing what hit really well and worked. Each show is specific and a reaction to what I was thinking at the time. I don’t know if I could do a show like Street of Blood now because it was so of its time, talking about the blood crisis in Canada and the rise of the then reform party. It seemed to have a place in time as the others did. I think Tinka was the one where things kind of changed and there was more of a direction of what I did and what I could do."

Those who have been longtime fans of Burkett saw a major change in style in his last show Billy Twinkle: Reqium for a Golden Boy. Penny Plain returns to the style he became known for.

"Billy is very specific in my mind in it being different, there was a lot more me down there and it was brighter, fresher, a more in-your-face performance. Near the end of Billy Twinkle I wasn’t disliking the show but I realized that it had perhaps been a little sideways step to try something different. Ultimately I wanted to get back to what I think I do best, and Penny Plain is that on a bunch of levels. At first glance, the puppets for Billy looked like puppets with big heads and moving eyes, I wanted to get back to the naturalistic proportions and delicacy that I started doing with Tinka and Street of Blood. Penny Plain is back to that design of marionette that I feel happiest with. I was so present all the time in Billy I wanted to get out of the way and do a show where the puppets got all the focus. This is a bridge show where I am up above and the bridge is the highest I have ever done so the strings are stupidly long, so I can step out of their realm a bit more. This show is a weird, funny look at darkness which is what I tend to do. It is the last three days of mankind but there are huge laughs in this show. So I guess you could say, I’m baaaaack."

Twinkle ran at Alberta Theatre Projects in the spring of 2010, creating a show that was a lot of work, but worth it, Burkett said.

"Billy closed last fall in Toronto on Halloween. So it was less than a year to opening Penny Plain. I had started preliminary work on this show last summer, all the design work and principal sculpture was done. Then I had to put it down and do Billy because it was such an exhausting show to do every night and a long, hugely successful run. The minute Billy stopped, I had to take off the hat I had been wearing for a couple of years, performing guy, and go back into getting up at 5:30 and being workshop guy. It was a pretty abrupt dive back into building all these puppets. This is a big show, it has 35 puppets in it which is more than Billy had."

Burkett has mastered the ability to make puppets do unbelievable things, a trend continuing with Penny Plain. He admits sometimes what he conceptualizes just won’t work but when it does, it is magical.

"One of the first images I had was of an old man walking across the stage with a suitcase, putting it down, taking a marionette out of it, doing a little show, and picking up the suitcase. I had it in my brain for years until we were actually building the show and I thought, that’s stupid, we can’t do that!" The rest of it was pretty straightforward. I had done so much work on this script and so many readings across the country, so I had a real handle on the story and the script and a straight ahead view of what we were building in the studio. I worked so much on the script all year that when we were building we all knew what that character and costume we had to do. There was a lot of collaboration and discussion about everything we were building and I really, really liked that."

Also important in creating the show was the workshop process, which saw Burkett do a read through of the script in Calgary in March. It helps streamline the process to the actual show.

"What it is now is a leaner version of what you heard, after we spent a week just editing and doing timing of scenes. When we started rehearsals in Edmonton I thought it was the finished script, but I made edits every day. It is a leaner version, there is not a lot of fluff in this one. I was reminded that the first preview for Street of Blood in Winnipeg went two hours and forty-five minutes. That made my jaw drop. Penny Plain comes in at one hour and thirty-nine minutes. So I have learned how to shave off that time and still tell a good story. "

If you have tickets, give yourself plenty of time to make it to the theatre, the shows have a no late or re-entry policy.

"What I am doing is trying to get your focus down into this little world. The first five minutes of the show is the audience going who is up there, what has he got in his hand, how does that walk. There is always that opening few minutes of getting used to the form. Hopefully if the storytelling is good enough after everybody has digested the mechanics of what is going on they go into the story. If there is a disruption, or even an intermission to sell twizzlers and wine in the lobby then we all have to go back to square one and everything is broken. That is primarily the reason. It isn’t my arrogance, it is out of courtesy to the other 299 patrons who actually thought to pee before, or had the decency to just pee into their pants and sit there and be wet."

In writing a preview or review of a show like Penny Plain the challenge becomes not giving anything away. There are many twists and surprises and creative moments that are remarkable and shouldn’t be spoiled. So it is best left to the man himself to describe the show.

"I think ATP used every word I gave them as an option for their marketing. A dark apocalyptic gothic comedy thriller. It is kind of all of those things; it is a Fantasia on the end of mankind. It is set in a rooming house run by a blind lady and it is the collapse of civilization and we witness the last three days through characters living in the rooming house. It is funny and dark and despairing and kind of hopeful in a weird way."