A Puppet Theater Gets Weird, With Georg Baselitz as a Guide Ben Miller reviews the new production of Histoire du Soldat at the Salzburg Festival

On a rainy morning earlier this month, in a theater in Salzburg, Austria, a soldier danced to an offbeat march with exaggerated high kicks. Flanking him, a cornet player and a percussionist bounced to the rhythm.

Suddenly, the soldier’s foot flew off.

It was lucky, though, that the soldier’s head was made of crinkled metal and his limbs were cardboard tubes. A rehearsal ground to a halt, the music stopped. A hand emerged from the bottom of the stage and began to reaffix the foot, and a technician came to sit on the stage lip. The effect was jarring, as if giants had invaded the human world.

These dislocations of scale are a specialty of the Salzburg Marionette Theater, where the rehearsal was taking place. This summer, the company is collaborating for the first time with a contemporary visual artist for a new production of Stravinsky’s monodrama “The Soldier’s Tale,” opening July 29, with puppets and sets designed by Georg Baselitz.