Matt Cox’s Puffs, is a smart, whimsical spoof on J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter series. It follows the lives of the key characters: Harry, Hermione Granger, Ron Weasley (by different names) and their adventures at Hogwarts. Hogwarts is a private school for witches and wizards. Clearly this saga goes far too long to fit into a traditional play, so it’s basically a gloss. Hogwarts engages many of the same customs as a traditional British Private School, different houses that compete, yearly exams, and regular sporting events. At Hogwarts it’s Qidditch, with two teams facing off on broomsticks.
It emerges right away that the members of the Puffs House include Harry, Hermione, Ron, and a band of assorted underdogs. This is the premise from which Cox fashions his satire on the tropes and familiar plot devices of Potter’s odyssey. Cox avoids what might be considered cheap shots at Potter and his misfits. They’re never depicted as losers or nebbishes, but rather, good-hearted teens who can’t catch a break. Puffs plays like sketch comedy, taking occasional excursions into the unlikely, the same way we laugh when Sue Ann Niven rotates on a circular bed, beneath a mirrored ceiling. Cox takes sweet-natured jibes at the various characters We may laugh at the villains, but never our hero(es). It’s like the send-ups they used to write for Mad Magazine. Cursory in the best sense of the word. Whatever the jokes were, you couldn’t take them too seriously. Whether their target was The Sound of Music, Mod Squad or Dragnet, first last and always, it was about the gags.
Directors Kyle Igneczi and Ashley White handle the merriment with skill and agility. Episodes and bits move at a brisk pace, orchestrating punchlines, blackouts and rejoinders with aplomb. The multitudinous cast (Billy Betsill, Micah JL Brooks, Savannah Elayyach, Alli Franken, Edna Gill, Nick Haley, Damian Gomez, Madeline Morris, Taylor Staniforth, Juliette Talley, Aaron White, Mark Oristano) is nimble and poised as a bus filled with zippy gymnasts. Or a barrel full of convivial ferrets.
Puffs is a clever show, with lots to tickle aficionados of Harry Potter, the orphan kept in a pantry by his Aunt and Uncle, beaten down until he discovers he has remarkable, supernatural gifts, and parents who died, saving his life. In every volume he does his time as a pariah, going from champion to the object of scorn. Cox takes the story of a lonely boy, who goes on to forge amazing, lifelong friendships (but not without adversity) and gives us gobs of amusement and glee.
IMPRINT Theatreworks staged Puffs in January 2020. www.Imprinttheatreworks.org