TSIM Are Bringing The Giant Puppets Back After The Sydney Opera House Damage Saga

Saturday’s Forum show is being billed as the puppets’ likely farewell, giving Melbourne a third version of the No Mistakes tour.

TSIM are bringing the giant puppets from their Sydney Opera House shows back for Saturday 10 October at Melbourne’s Forum Theatre, according to a management statement published by HEAVY.

The announcement describes the outing as “likely to be their last appearance ever”, with the puppets returning for the final night of the band’s three-show Melbourne run.

In follow-up comments supplied to Blunt via DRW Entertainment, management said the band would wear its Opera House costumes and perform a unique set “cobbled together from the best bits of the other shows”.

Management also stood by the qualified farewell wording, offering a characteristically strange explanation: “This is likely to be the last appearance as only a fool leaves evidence this large just lying around the pool room.”

The band had its own message. In an earlier response supplied to Blunt by DRW Entertainment, TSIM said: “TSIM deny all claims by management and would like it known that whatever you do on Saturday night…don’t come to the show!”

The puppet return adds a new twist to the tour plans outlined in September. Blunt reported that the No Mistakes tour would feature two different performances, while management was exploring a third Melbourne variation and searching its costume archives.

That update also suggested audiences apparently wouldn’t need to prepare for giant cardboard skulls being thrown into the crowd, as the tour wouldn’t replicate the recent Adelaide and Darwin festival appearances.

Management has now clarified to BLUNT that those skulls were a separate set of props: “The giant skulls were a totally different concept unique to the Adelaide and Darwin festival shows, built and thoroughly destroyed at those shows.” The Sydney connection comes with some expensive history. ABC reported in May that the Opera House had issued an itemised repairs and cleaning bill totalling $18,488.80 following damage during the band’s 10 April performance. A venue spokesperson confirmed to the ABC that seats and sections of timber flooring in the Concert Hall had been damaged.

TSIM denied responsibility in a statement previously reported by Blunt. The band jokingly pointed instead to the Sydney Symphony Orchestra’s performance of Mahler’s Sixth Symphony, invoking its “hammer blows of fate”.

The Forum run begins on Wednesday 7 October, continues Thursday 8 October and wraps on Saturday. The venue lists Techno 666 as Saturday’s support, with doors at 7pm, the support set at 8pm and TSIM scheduled for 9pm. Set times are approximate and subject to change, and the show is 18+.

Tickets and the full itinerary are available through DRW Entertainment. With TSIM’s giant puppets facing possible retirement, Saturday’s Forum show could be your last chance to see them in action.