Unique is perhaps the best way to describe Ennio’s human puppet show which wowed the audience at the opening night of the Bermuda Festival.

The wordless, one-man performance features Italian Ennio Marchetto seamlessly switching from one paper costume outfit to another as he mimed to well-known tunes — everything from jazz classics to opera and heavy metal.

The trick lies in the inventiveness of the designs which fold from one outlandish pastiche to another — one dimensional but nonetheless dazzling in their variety.

It is a triumph of choreography as Ennio works deftly through an incredible 50 characters.

The show’s success is undoubtedly a tribute as much to his designer Sosthen Hennekam, who kept reinventing the same format in ways you could never predict.

Thus snarl-lipped rocker Billy Idol gets a motorbike to ride on while busty Dolly Parton does her number on a donkey.

Which is not to underestimate Ennio’s own virtually flawless handling of the colourful props in act which has been honed over 17 years and has won him endless tour dates around the globe.

There are times when you lose sight of exactly which bit is him and which is the costume.

But despite the undoubted professionalism, I quickly found the format grating.

For something which is described as stand-up comedy there were precious few gags — and when they come they are pretty heavy handed. Thus Boy George metamorphosed into a road sweeper and apparently it’s still possible to get laughs out of Tina Turner’s big hair.

But when was visual humour ever subtle?

For me a neat idea was done to death and in the end just came across as endless showing off — a stunt which might impress classmates in the first year of a drama college but not the stuff to sustain a show for well over an hour.

Indeed I sensed one particular moment when the audience would have been happy for the show to end during an ET scene which drew a few sentimental “awwws” from the audience.

But after a pause the show crashed on.

Despite growing irritation I told myself to just sit back and enjoy the great tunes — despite the fact that none of them last for more than a minute.

Certainly the City Hall audience lapped it up, clapping along and laughing and even providing a standing ovation in some sections. Not for the first time at a Bermuda Festival comedy show, I felt like the only one left out of the joke.

But for me the idea of watching someone put on different cardboard dresses for an hour was indeed paper thin.