Concrete Playground

It is easy to draw parallels between The Adventures of Alvin Sputnik: Deep Sea Explorer and Kevin Costner's Waterworld. Both, for example, plunge the audience into a waterlogged land, drowned by past greed and arrogance. They also share a quest for dry land and feature a curious outsider as their protagonist.

Here is where the comparison evaporates. Alvin Sputnik's creator, Perth artist Tim Watts, has developed a poetic, engaging future world using a low budget and a generous imagination.

There is an elegance in how Watts shifts from one medium to the next, using animation, puppetry, song and live action to tell the story of Sputnik's tragic efforts to be reunited with his dead lover. His beguiling stage presence captures the audience's attention immediately, making it very easy to suspend disbelief and be moved to tears by a character built from a foam ball and a glove.

At under an hour, and for a handful of dollars, this is exceptionally well-valued magic.

Image by Michelle Robin Anderson